Houston we have a turtle, a big one!
by Luigi Esguerra
Summary: It's the beginning of the 1970's, Apollo 11 has landed on the moon, Apollo 13 went disastrous, the Vietnam conflict had begun to go south, and a big turtle had been spotted across the skies...wait, what? (A sort of comical alternate history) A/N: ARCHIVED. REDONE and POSTED AS ANOTHER STORY 'Eyes on A'tuin'
1. Introduction

Introduction -

Inspired by alternate history stories posted online, mainly Eyes Turned Skywards; a story told in a no drama, full of plausible facts, history-book-like-form, through short - maybe less than 500 words - posts, this silly and comical alternate history tells of what if A'tuin - the Discworld - crosses into our Solar System.

Surely it's an alternate history, because it matters with the what if the Discworld crosses into our solar system, however told from the perspective of the greatest judge of time; history, as in from the saying 'Let history be the judge of _'.

As with other alternate history stories, some basic knowledge of the history shortly before the point of divergence - or the event that caused everything to change in relation to our timeline.

This alternate history's point of divergence would be in the middle of the Cold War and the Space Race, where the Apollo 13 incident has just happened and President Nixon starts to think of cutting the budget of the Apollo program among the other stupid things he's about to do.

So this chapter shall cover the historical and technical basis of this exercise in alternate history, from Kennedy's 'We shall go to the Moon' speech, up to the point of divergence; when NASA and the USAF reports to Nixon of the discovery of a strange world flying past in between the orbits of Venus and the Earth.

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What went before.

At the tail end of the Second World War, the Russians and the Americans stand on German ground, doing all they can to unearth the technological secrets of the Nazi regime, an evil regime that has invented the ballistic missile, the jet fighter, and the electric submarine among other evil things they did.

The Americans, through Operation Paperclip, was able to 'rescue' Wernher Von Braun, the chief lead designer of the V2 rocket program - Nazi Germany's ballistic missile - along with his team of engineers. The Russians, on the other hand, did not disclose how they got the technology, however their lead designer was Korolev.

With the invention of the Atomic Bomb, came a race to deliver this powerful weapon onto an enemy's homeland, after all an atomic weapon is heavy, bulky in size, and difficult to detonate, and also difficult to deliver. However, with the invention of rocketry, superpowers can hypothetically deliver something to anywhere across the world, including a nuclear warhead.

Both sides were rushing to build the first rocket to get an object into orbit, the Americans had seriously underestimated the Russians.

To the surprise of the Americans, the Russians did just that, they were able to launch an object into orbit aboard an R7 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, it's called the Sputnik and it became mankind's first ever satellite.

This resulted in 'The Sputnik Crisis' which happened in the middle of 'The Red Scare', a general public paranoia that anyone could be a Russian spy living amongst them, and this crisis was further exacerbated by the American's embarrassing failure to launch their own satellite, the papers called the failure 'Kaputnik'

Kaputnik was mainly caused by an internal tussle between the Army and the Navy; President Eisenhower did not want to have America's first satellite to be associated with war, so he entrusted the Navy to launch America's first satellite, however the Navy did not have Wernher Von Braun, a name that would become renowned in spaceflight history. Wernher Von Braun's rocket eventually launched America's first space satellite.

Eventually, Eisenhower signed the National Aerospace Act, forming the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and all rocket testing and development had went to this agency.

However, the Russians were scoring firsts after firsts; the first man, the first woman, the first dog, the first monkey, the first object on the moon, the first spacewalk, and so on.

As more prestige went to the Russians as time went by, President John F. Kennedy directed NASA to go to the moon, the symbolic victory of the space race. What followed next would be the Apollo Program and the rockets associated with it; the Saturn family of rockets, all under the design and guidance of Wernher Von Braun.

History remembers well of the successes of the Apollo Program; landing the first man on the moon, however it tends to forget how the Apollo Program died and the plans to use Apollo hardware before the death of the program.

But who killed the program? Nixon, yup, President Nixon, the man who used 'The Madman Doctrine' as a legitimate way of getting his way in the world stage; from bombing the crap out of Laos for no reason at all to force the North Vietnamese to talk to the Americans (Laos was a neutral country with no affiliation to the communist North Vietnam and was minding their own business until the Americans dropped more bombs than the overall combined allied bombs dropped on the Axix into a small country.) to trying to break into the Democratic National Convention Headquarters.

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The characters who shaped history.

Wernher Von Braun - considered to be the father of the American space program, he designed the Saturn rockets and the Apollo program, as well as designing other rockets that would make the covers of Colliers' MAN WILL CONQUER SPACE SOON series of magazine.

A special note on Von Braun; because of him, the way government-contractor relationships were handled rather one-sided in favor of NASA, meaning that the contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, etc.) were forced to follow Von Braun's design to the letter, rather than the government simply stating the objectives and allowing the contractors to engineer a way to get to the objective.

President Nixon - The reason why Laos hates the Americans and why the Space Shuttle was developed instead of further developing the plans of the Apollo Program.

George Mueller - A legend in spaceflight history as the head of the Manned program department of NASA, he's the guy that suggested the Integrated Manned Program.

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Meet the rocket (or, a dummies' guide to the Apollo missions and the Saturn V and the other things)

The hardware used for the Apollo program was no joke, it still is the strongest rocket ever built by humanity and it lofted three astronauts to the moon and back alive, however the absolute power of Apollo hardware was never demonstrated and only lived in the notes of Von Braun and other suggestions by the contractors.

Here are just some of the awe inspiring applications of the Apollo hardware that would serve heavily in this alternate history:

Apollo Interplanetary

Using nothing more than an untouched Saturn V (with the exception of the top part of the third stage (SIVB) where the Lunar Module once sat inside), there could have been a flyby of Venus by a team of three astronauts. As far as we're concerned, this would have been the furthest any human being would have gone to.

-Skylab

This may have been executed in real life, however it was only a small part of it, the Apollo-Skylab could have been bigger and could have lasted far longer than it had in our timeline.

Space Transportation System

We are talking about nuclear rockets, space shuttles, and large space stations to support an interplanetary civilization (or at least expedition), all using the Saturn V as their launch vehicle and other Apollo hardware.

The Saturn C5N would have lofted the SIVN stage/ the Nuclear Shuttle into orbit and - based on the designs for the Nuclear Shuttle - could have executed Apollo 8 through 17 without being thrown away, only refueled. Yes, Apollo 8 through 17, all the moon missions with the exception of Apollo 9, could have been done with only one Nuclear Shuttle, it can be reused ten times before the hardware would become unreliable due to wear and tear. Plus, this Nuclear Shuttle can take us to Mars and Venus with heavy payloads compared to the Apollo-Venus flyby.

As for the Apollo-Shuttle/ Saturn-Shuttle, that would be similar to the Space Shuttle approved by President Nixon with one exception; it would be launched on top of a reusable Saturn V first stage, either that or on top of another space shuttle-esque plane (space shuttle-ception)

Saturn MLV

There were plans to expand the capability of the Saturn V by adding extra boosters to the side, the Saturn MLV (Modified Launch Vehicle) would have played heavily with lofting heavy space station parts into orbit. One such modification had made the Saturn V into a monster, from 300 feet tall to 600 feet tall capable of lofting nearly 500 tons into Low Earth Orbit, it's called the Saturn V-24.

Contractors' Plans

Given Von Braun's heavy handedness with the contractors, most of the plans of the plenty of contractors in making the Apollo more efficient and better were hidden, kept in the lockers and drawers in the offices of the contractors, never to reach NASA.

These plans survived and had been uploaded online, painting a MUCH different picture of how Apollo hardware could have been used, here are some of the very notable ones;

Apollo Command Service Module Shuttle - a patent was filed by the contractors who constructed the Command Service Module where swing wings would be attached to the sides of a service module as well as a tail and landing gears, this would have allowed for advanced supersonic flight as well as potential non-rocket way of flying to orbit, probably being dropped from a B52 bomber and activating its engine mid-flight to reach orbit, similar to what the X42 had done.

Reusable Saturn first stage - filed by none other than Boeing, their plan was big, insane, and problematic, but it could have cut costs of the Saturn V, their plan was to attach a heat shield on the top of the SI (S-1, S-I - the first stage) as well as parachutes, and then they'll use large helicopters to catch the first stage mid-air and fly it back to Kennedy Space Center.

Longer Lunar Missions - There were plans to have used a heavier module lander that would allow for week long missions.

SII as an interplanetary spaceship - Lockheed Martin had a patent where the second stage of the Saturn V would have been used as an interplanetary spaceship capable of going to Mars. Dubbed the SIIB, it would be launched on top of another SII and SI, but it would be empty, it would be refueled in orbit by several SIVB tankers (If it sounds awfully familiar, it's because of SpaceX's plan for orbital refueling.)

Conclusion to the Introduction:

With the basic knowledge of the Apollo program and the things that could have been, with further explanations as we apply them to the alternate history, we now hand the show over to the story itself, the year is 1970, and Apollo 13 had just happened.

A/N: If you recognized some aspects of the spacecrafts in the story, then you're either reading the good science fiction stories or spent most of your time going through the internet looking for old plans and studies for the Apollo program. If you've found some erring technical problems or irregularities in terms of the technology used in this odd alternate history, well let's just say that Narrativium has some interesting side effects to reality surrounding it. (or throw in a comment/review, a proper one.)

As with other fictional alternate histories, this is a work of fiction, I do not own Discworld - that belongs to the late Sir Terry Pratchett (GNU Terry Pratchett!), and also let's just hand wave some implausible aspects of the technical details of the spacecraft, I'm just a huge fan of the Apollo program and not a rocket scientist!

The real story starts at Part 04, that is unless you do not mind being given a lecture on the alternate history of the story.


	2. Part 01 - Apollo

With the successful failure of Apollo 13, which was caused by an explosion in the oxygen tank, which in turn was caused short cuts caused by budget cuts, along with the problematic rising costs of the Apollo Program, the program that had brought men to the moon is at a risk of being terminated.

President Nixon was the man in charge, and he had a nation to navigate through the conflict in Vietnam, communist China, the Russians, and his plans to keep himself in power by winning the next election.

Due to the incident of Apollo 13, and with the upcoming budget allotment by Congress, Nixon summoned the administrator of NASA along with the other managers and higher ups to brief him on NASA's future plans.

On one hand, Wernher Von Braun's illustrated plan of the neophyte manager of the Office of Manned Space Flight, George Mueller, who was meeting face-to-face with the man in charge of NASA, his boss, George Low, who was advocating for the Space Shuttle.

Mueller was armed with illustrations done by Von Braun and his team depicting the Space Transportation System, on the other hand, the other man was with a plastic model of the space shuttle.

After taking their turns in briefing the President, both men were told to sit outside of the Oval Office and wait for them to be called in. However, something broke the silent interlude, a senior and high ranking official of the United States Air Force - a Brigadier General nonetheless - had just burst into the office of the President of the United States.

After ten minutes, an assistant to the President had summoned the two NASA chiefs back into his office, a large picture from one of their deep space probes now sat on the desk of the President.

Upon closer inspection, and upon additional briefings from the Brigadier General, all four men in the room knew that this object was a planet, the picture had not gone through proper processing yet, however the two NASA chiefs had guesstimated that it was a planetoid, or even a planet.

The black and white picture was blurry, however it showed a shape that was more complex than an asteroid, and oddly enough it looked like a big turtle with four elephants on its shell, however this was considered as being caused by the poor quality of the photos.

The two NASA men had science in mind, while the Brigadier General had the defense of the United States in the forefront of his mind, as for President Nixon, he had a big plan to secure his second term.

Nixon told the NASA chiefs to have the picture processed clearer, and wanted a formal briefing within the next twenty four hours, plus he ordered this to be kept a secret until further notice.

Later that day, sometime in the afternoon, NASA Administrator George Low would be in contact with Wernher Von Braun, the Director of the Marshall Flight Center, he briefed Von Braun on the picture snapped by one of their space probes, he had a gut feeling that it was a planet.

Being NASA Administrator meant that the new data and reports from the scientists would be at his table immediately, and so far all the data points to the object being a planet, because sunlight was bouncing off of some atmosphere of some form based on its luminosity levels.

Mueller's marching orders to Von Braun was simple, design a rocket - with existing Apollo hardware - to take three men and other sensory data to this odd planet and back.

When the phone was hung, Von Braun was said to have immediately pulled out copies of the schematics of the Saturn V rocket and of the Apollo CSM and SM, as well as his notes and other ideas, and went to work.

The team in charge of deciphering the image and making the image clearer was on time with their presentation; less than twenty four hours after Nixon requested for a briefing, the NASA Administrator and the USAF Brigadier General was at his office updating the President.

Of note would be the fact that it was moving in a weird manner, based on new data, they made a calculation of its orbital trajectory, it would take it to an orbit towards the sun before being slung back out into the outer solar system and towards interstellar space.

They were now stuck with only two options; ignore it and pray it goes away and no one notices, or go for it and land astronauts there, as for the option of going there, each side had their own reasons; NASA's position was for science, the position of the USAF - and the Pentagon to some degree - was for defense.

President Nixon's personal position however still remains controversial, with some accusing him of planning to use the so called 'moving planet' as a way to tell the American people to fear the Russians more somehow, and to paint himself as a hero, just in time for reelection.

Either way, whether people believed Nixon was innocent of coming up with a plan to paint a better picture of himself as some sort of hero or not, an opinion piece began circulating through the New York Times, a supposed scientist had written that this planetoid or asteroid could be redirected and used as a nuclear base by the Russians.

In the span of two weeks or less, the opinion of the American public on the Apollo mission had become positive, with scenes of people asking scientists in public forums on whether or not it's a threat and some are calling for NASA to go there in order to gain superiority over the Russians.

Some people within NASA did not want to go to the asteroid, including Wernher Von Braun himself, however a supposed 'leak' of papers had managed to cement the destiny of NASA into landing people on the odd planet.

In 1963, the US Air Force had aerial intelligence of some special rocket being made by the Russians, the picture showed it to be an advanced rocket as large as the Saturn V, this was kept secret from the public and only confirmed after it was declassified after the fall of the Soviet Union.

However someone leaked it to the press and the USAF was forced to admit that they knew that the Russians had a rocket that can match theirs, President Nixon used this - along with some line drawing and inference, anything to get the public opinion on his side - to justify a mission.

Whenever a high level officer in NASA would issue a statement against the idea, Nixon would use the negative statement and paint himself as a hero for marshaling NASA to do its job, the opposite of what he wanted only a few days ago, in that he wanted NASA to come up with a cheaper project in order to fund the war in Vietnam.

More details eventually came out from NASA within a week after the leak, their launch window is from now until 1974, three years and eight months the planet would spend at being the closest in respect to the Earth before it would head into the sun and be thrown outwards, it was traveling at its slowest and would being speeding up gradually.

They have approximately six months of travel time to the planet and six months back to Earth, not counting the time they would spend in orbit and in Extra-Vehicular Activity on the planetoid.

Nixon demanded for a proper plan of action to the planetoid and wanted it in a month or less, and he along with the rest of America and the world had gotten that plan in only two weeks on May 27, 1970

In a public televised announcement, NASA briefed the world on their plan of landing people on this unusual world, and this briefing was done by none other than Wernher Von Braun himself.

They would uprate a Saturn V by replacing the original F-1 engines with more powerful F-1A engines, and this already powerful rocket would be assisted by four solid rocket boosters.

The third stage would be heavily modified, it would be using the SIV-N, a modified SIV-B stage that uses the nuclear engine called NERVA which at the time had already broken rocket engine efficiency records, plus the top of the SIV-N would be modified to have a space habitat and an airlock, these modifications resulted in the third stage becoming longer.

The Apollo CSM would be modified to become some sort of spacecraft or a shuttle, just in case if the hypothesis that the planetoid had an atmosphere was true, this would allow for the Apollo CSM to land like and take off like an airplane, as long as the planetoid did not have either too thick of an atmosphere or too strong of a gravity, both of which are unlikely based on the data at hand.

It too would be uprated and extended, it would have two engines instead of one and could carry four small probes to be attached on top of the expanded engine plate.

The mission would go as follows, the Saturn V would lift off as normal and would bring the SIV-N to a Low Earth Orbit, which then the Apollo CSM Shuttle would decouple, flip over, and dock with the airlock of the SIV-N habitation module.

The NERVA nuclear engine would then bring the whole craft into a Trans-planetary injection burn which should take them to the planetoid in six months, which then the ship would flip around and use the NERVA engine to slow the ship down to orbit the planetoid.

The Apollo shuttle would undock and proceed to land like an unpowered glider on the planet, the astronauts are expected to conduct experiments and take readings which would be critical for understanding the odd world.

Once everything is done, the Apollo Shuttle would take off and rendezvous with the SIV-N ship, which then it would conduct a Trans-Earth Inject burn in order to head back to Earth in six months.

Wernher Von Braun's presentation was met with applause by the audience, and was met with nods among the governmental circles in Washington D.C, this plan was approved immediately by President Nixon.

Apollo 14 through 17 would still be left untouched because of the amount of training and hardware already dedicated for these missions, so that leaves the astronauts-in-training for Apollo 18 to take over as the astronauts for the new mission to this world, it's simply called 'Apollo Interplanetary'.

The launch date would be sometime in May of 1971, more or less one year from the announcement and approval of the plans.


	3. Part 02 - That's no asteroid

Practically as soon as the on-air presentation ended, more discoveries on the planetoid were unearthed by analysts, it became very apparent that this planetoid had an atmosphere, had an orbital influence, and even had a small moon and - unbelievably - a small star.

The shape of the small world had become clearer, it was obviously a flat world, a disc-world, and it was a lot like Earth with the exception of its size and shape, it was said to be smaller than Earth - the flat 'disc' part being only ten thousand kilometers in diameter, much like the Pacific Ocean.

These pieces of information were spread quickly through the offices of NASA and the other offices of the government, and pretty much also the offices of the editors of major newspapers across the country, and then the world; this wasn't just some plain asteroid, it was a planet!

The reactions varied wildly but can be categorized into three; there are those who are worried about it, those who want to land men on it, and those who want to leave it untouched, no one was crazy enough not to care about it.

This issue had reached the offices of the representatives at the United Nations in New York, two General Assembly sessions were dedicated to discussing the issue, and one Security Council meeting had the topic as its main issue.

Pressure mounted on the nations of the world as to how they should respond, or whether or not they should even respond, historians of today would point the finger at the Soviets for making the issue slightly of a much bigger problem than it should have.

For one, the Soviets should not have scolded the United States in the Security Council for attempting to land on the (now media-christened) Discworld, accusing them of using the mission for military purposes and in direct abeyance of the Outer Space treaty.

The one thing about geopolitical blackmail is simply through espionage and intelligence, the United States had used the chance to reveal that Soviet Cosmonauts were armed with shotguns, Nixon - being the not-so-nice political maestro that he is now remembered as - jumped on the chance to justify a full blown interplanetary mission, they reasoned 'If the Soviets were arming Cosmonauts for a potential invasion, then we can do whatever the hell they're doing; do whatever we want in space!'

In reality, the Cosmonauts were armed with shotguns in order to defend themselves in cases where their Soyuz capsule would end up way of course, say ten or fifty kilometers from civilization in the Siberian Tundra in the middle of winter, and a hungry bear is nearby.

But the American public did not buy the Soviet explanation, not with the skewed representation of space, the image seared in everyone's imaginations was that of Cosmonauts shooting down Apollo capsules in space or landing on US home soil and conducting acts of terror.

Should the newspaper polls be of any help, they showed that more of the American public were in support of landing a mission on the Discworld immediately, with some demanding for a proper and long term mission.

As for the Russian public, they already thought that their space program was way behind the United States to even care, however there were demands to try to catch up with the United States, and these came from way up in the Kremlin, forcing the Soviets to resurrect the N-1 rocket.

On the flip side, in terms of politics, the Congress of the United States was having a hard time deciding what to do next, and even the Oval Office of the White House was not exempted from the political storm that was to come, mostly with the budget.

With the war in Vietnam coming to a dangerous tipping point in favor of the North Vietnamese, most especially with the Tet Offensive underway, the Pentagon top brass were demanding for more money and more troops to support the defense of South Vietnam.

Nixon, on the other hand, found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, with the midterms around the corner - and with presidential elections in less than two years - they have to launch a interplanetary mission that would cost more than Apollo 8, 11, 12, and 13 combined, or else they'd find the Democrats in control of Congress by the end of the year.

But then on the other hand, he needed to find a way to get the United States out of Vietnam as well, but that has to wait until the presidential elections in order to ensure his success.

No one knew how his mind worked, however his assistants - by as early as the beginning of June of 1970 - can tell that President Nixon may be planning something unthinkable.

In a address to Congress on June 4 1970, Nixon pleaded to Congress to increase NASA's funding, and that he has plans to return the boys in boots in Vietnam back home immediately, saying that they may be beaten in Vietnam, but no one is going to beat them in space.

Two events were the direct result of this announcement; the General Appropriations Bill for the next fiscal year had allotted nearly five billion dollars for the Apollo program, taking it straight out of the funding for the U.S. Military, much to the dismay of the Pentagon and much to the rejoicing of the mothers and wives who had to see their sons and husbands go to Vietnam.

This increase in budget came with strings attached, Nixon wanted a full blown landing in order to rub it into the Soviets that they won, period. As for the scientists eager to explore this new world, they too wanted a much greater landing; they wanted an expedition team that would land there the same way that Cortez, Magellan, and Columbus did on the South Americas, the Philippines, and the Americas respectively.

This was not a simple Apollo-moon mission, this was to be a full blown exploration into an unknown world, if the surface is exactly like Earth, then the astronauts were expected to stay there until the very last minute of their return-to-Earth window.

The walls of NASA, like that of Congress and the White House, were stormy, in order to even compare with the great explorers of the world during the age of exploration as well as against the supposed heroes of the polar expeditions, they'd need a much more daring and bigger spaceship.

The plan that ended up becoming signed by the Administrator of NASA was something unthinkable; they were to scrap Apollo 14 through 17 and 19 in order to use their boosters and hardware for a great interplanetary mission that was to rival all other expeditions before until that point.

Using a modified Saturn V meant for Apollo 14, they would launch a slightly heavily modified SII, called the SII-B, and a empty nuclear SIV variant with a habitat on top of the stage into Low Earth Orbit, and then modified Saturn Vs for Apollo 15 and 16 would launch two SII stages to act as the interplanetary ship's additional fuel tanks.

Six uprated Saturn IB rockets would be used to loft modified SIV-B tanker rockets that would fuel the interplanetary spaceship. Apollo 17's Saturn V would then be used to launch the habitat module based on the initial Mars exploration mission plan drawn up for the Integrated Manned Program.

Three more Saturn IB rockets would then be used to loft three different Apollo Command and Service modules, there is the Apollo Shuttle - with its wings and ablative heat shield, the Apollo Lander - with three engines in place of the normal Service Module engine and is capable of landing on any moon, and the normal Block I Apollo.

Each Apollo command module had three astronauts on board, including the one stowed safely and comfortably in the main excursion lander attached to the habitat module, bringing the total number of astronauts to twelve.

These changes were presented to the public by the same person, Wernher Von Braun, along with his design team, they ended up painting a daring and bold exploration of space right out of science fiction, much to the public's excitement.

Von Braun's team explained the changes in detail, the change that has attracted the most attention would be the use of a modified SII stage, the typical J2 nozzles were replaced with an experimental Toroidal Aerospike design, this would increase the rocket's capability by increasing the efficiency of the engines.

Behind closed doors, away from the media, the spotlights, and the public, NASA had a problem with this mission, they need that Interplanetary cruiser to be a long term multi-use space ship much like how a sea ship is a long term and multi-use seafaring vessel.

What they needed was a space infrastructure, precisely like the one envisioned by Mueller, and that was what the secondary mission of the Apollo Interplanetary became; to put into reality the Integrated Manned Program to act as a good epilogue for the Apollo Interplanetary.

Once the plans were approved, most surprisingly the Integrated Manned Program was approved as-is, NASA went straight to work; with one year to develop, launch and build the Interplanetary Cruiser, and two years to come up with some sort of foundations for the Integrated Manned Program, there was no time to lose.


	4. Part 03 - Making it up as we go along

Plenty of changes happened between the signing of the plan, June 30 1970, and the launch itself, which was delayed up to 1973, after the Watergate Scandal had nearly rocked Nixon out of office the year before.

The world was surprised, taken aback one could say, when NASA announced that they will continue with Apollo 14 next year, as well as with Apollo 15, 16, and 17, a stark contrast to the rumors around NASA that the rest of the Apollo missions were to be scrapped.

The five billion dollars allotted to NASA were used to develop the Saturn-Shuttle, the Nuclear Shuttle, and to develop reusable first stages for Saturn IB and Saturn V, as well as the modifications for the Saturn V, and of course to build the improved Saturn V MLVs that would be used to launch the mission itself.

There was also development on a space station that would act as a port of call for future Interplanetary missions and manned flybys.

On top of the Apollo Interplanetary and the Integrated Manned Program, the lunar missions were eventually expanded and astronaut training for Apollos 18 through 23 began.

With the roster of astronauts busy for other missions, the Apollo Interplanetary was to be manned by six experienced pilots, down from twelve as previously planned, who each has had a record full of distinctions serving in either the Air Force or the Marines, they were under the command of Mission Commander James R. Thompson, a Marine, an Air Force pilot, and now an astronaut.

The other five were Ares P. Bacon, John A. Howell, Bob L. Meadows, Jebediah Baxter, and Bill Banks. Ares, John, and Bob were tasked with studying within orbit of the unusual planet, which included a landing on the moon of the said planet, while Jeb, Bill, and James were to be the men landing on the planet itself.

But then it became apparent that they needed an auxiliary team of four astronauts that could stay in the Interplanetary Cruiser, now christened as the Apollo Cruiser, and could possibly man the experimental Apollo shuttle in case of emergencies.

These caretaker astronauts were Jerry M. Johannes, Danny D. Probst, Desmond J. Moines, and Edmund F. Jones, with the last one to be the designated 'Permanent Post' or the one to stay aboard the Interplanetary Cruiser throughout the whole journey.

The training for these ten astronauts were intense, there were speculations that there was life on the Discworld that could be similar to their own, and as such the astronauts were chosen based on their military record, all of them were deployed during the Korean conflict with some having deployed in Vietnam.

The focus of the training were for the planetary team, they were also given training on how to possibly handle contact with extraterrestrial life, including anti-interrogation training by the C.I.A, and Capture Escape training by the Army's Intelligence Corps.

The planetary team were to be armed with M16 rifles and pistols just in case if the life they encountered was either below their technological capabilities or equal, the possibilities of encountering a civilization with advanced weapons were considered improbable due to the fact that they have not received a signal from this Discworld that indicated any advanced technology.

James, Jeb, and Bill were trained more like spies and Marines on top of being trained how to pilot the Apollo module - should there be a need to - and how to pilot and operate the lander.

The orbital team were trained similarly to the other moon landing Apollo astronauts, the only difference was the use of the orbital Apollo module, a modified module that could land on the moon of the Discworld and take off.

The Apollo Shuttle team were both trainees and test pilots, the Apollo CSM Shuttle had been launched and - amazingly - recovered from Low Earth Orbit and most of these tests had the team of astronauts inside it.

The designated caretaker was trained in how to operate the systems within the Apollo Cruiser, while the others too were trained on the operations of the Apollo Cruiser, the designated caretaker had the greatest pressure placed upon him; if all else failed - assuming a total loss of all three Apollo teams - he was to punch in a secret code into the computer that would have the Apollo Cruiser head straight back to Earth, in other words, he just has to be able to keep the Apollo Cruiser up and running, and be more than ready to high tail it back home, regardless of any situation, this has earned Edmund the title 'Chief Engineer' among his colleagues.

These training, as lamented by the Mission Commander James Thompson, were to become useless as soon as they have crammed it into their heads, mainly because of the ever-changing design of the modules to be used for the mission, there was even rumors that they were to head to Venus and then to Mars and then to Earth after the Discworld mission was complete, the rumor was mainly caused by the announcement of an attempt at developing and installing an In-Situ Resource Utilization system in the Lander, the Cruiser, and the Apollo Shuttle.

As these training, and research and development for the mission continued, notable events have rocked the political spectrum of the United States and of the world; Nixon was nearly booted out of office after a bungled burglary of the Democratic National Headquarters ended up exposing his thuggish handling of opponents, the Soviets have begun conducting Apollo 4-like missions with orbital testing of their LK lunar module and their N-1 rocket, and Saigon has fallen to the North Vietnamese on July 1970, when the Americans pulled out immediately as per orders of Nixon.

The fascination of space grew, however the people fascinated with space included generals, and the US Air Force was no exception, it was during this so called 'Space Craze' that the top brass of the Air Force requested for the Blue Gemini and Big Gemini projects to be resurrected.

When NASA gently refused the US Air Force on some of these requests, the Air Force simply took it upon themselves of developing the Gemini Program even further, including a orbital space station and a Direct Lunar Ascent with Gemini hardware,

1971

When 1971 came and went, the world was disappointed with the delay of the Interplanetary mission, the delays were caused by NASA's development of the other Saturn V rockets for the execution of the mission, as well as the development for reusing the first stage boosters of the rockets.

Even though 1971 became a big disappointment for those eager for the Apollo Interplanetary, it was highlighted with the first ever successful recovery of the first stage of the Saturn IB by the use of a big paraglider, and soon enough the successful recovery of an SIV-B stage on a suborbital trajectory with the same paraglider technique.

The biggest and most spectacular trick for the year went to Boeing's successful recovery of a used first stage of a Saturn V and reuse in the next four Apollo-Saturn test flights.

These developments made Apollo 14 lackluster in terms of impressing the public, it was executed and while it did become the headlines, it was soon swept aside by none other then the Soviets.

As for the Soviets, the N-1 had successfully conducted a manned lunar orbit, similar to Apollo 8, making them a step closer to the United States, but they were still a dozen steps behind, and were threatened to be left behind even further with the development of the Apollo technologies.

The US Air Force had launched their own unmanned moon mission using a Gemini lunar lander, as well as an unmanned orbital station.

1972

By the following year, NASA had developed the Saturn-Shuttle and had conducted the first test flight with the Shuttle orbiter named Enterprise, after a petition was signed by Star Trek fans to name the orbiter as such.

Other than the development of the Shuttle, which had been in development before the Apollo missions but only now had the budget to be developed and used, would be the flyable Saturn V first stage which was made distinct by its large delta shaped fins, allowing for it to glide back to Earth for either a landing on a runway or a gentle splashdown.

The Air Force too had made leaps in a reusable space program, their military Gemini program has had 15 orbital missions with only five fully reusable Gemini capsules and service modules.

For the Soviets, 1972 was their Apollo 11 moment, the LK lunar module landed on October 21, 1972, coinciding with their October Revolution anniversary, many Soviets had wanted to see their Cosmonauts removing the American flag and placing the hammer and sickle, however the cosmonauts landing on the moon instead planted the flag right next to the Stars and Stripes and saluted both flags, nearly earning them a gulag.

If a year was a novel with 365 pages, then the big twist and cliffhanger moment came on December 24, 1972, Christmas Eve, when NASA announced the date of the Interplanetary mission, April 20, 1973.


	5. Part 04 - Discfall

The Apollo Interplanetary mission, due to the distance of the target planet from the Earth, had not been covered on television as much as the other Apollo missions and most of the information of the events on the Discworld came from the post-mission press briefings conducted by Mission Control and the astronauts themselves.

The Mission Commander's recollection of events became the most notable, it was published as a novel a decade after the mission which was remembered as a light hearted recount of the events, mainly due to James' humorous and sarcastic commentary, it was only published after a decade due to an agreement to keep all personal opinions on the mission a secret for a decade, however since that deadline has lapsed, we shall have extracts as told from the words of the crew, and not just that of James'

The first Interplanetary Mission related launch would be that of A-I (Apollo Interplanetary) 01, a Saturn V B MLV carrying the main propulsion stack of the Apollo Cruiser which had the uprated and improved J2-Aerospike nozzles on the SII, which even without refueling could push an Apollo module all the way to Uranus and, with patience and orbital mechanics wizardry, maybe Pluto.

A-I 02 and 03 happened a day after A-I 01, these were the extra tanks of the Apollo Cruiser, which were basically SII stages with the engines removed.

A-I 04 through 09 happened between January and March 1973, they were SIV-B tankers that fed the SII-B, the SIV-N, and the two tanks fuel for the trip.

A-I 10 through 13 saw the launch of the main crew habitat and excursion lander stack, the Apollo Orbital Module, and the Apollo Shuttle. The habitat and excursion lander stack was docked on top of the SIV-N, the Apollo Orbital Module and the Apollo Shuttle were docked on the sides of a four way hub connector located at the top end of the stack.

James recounted the day his module, the A-I 10, was launched on the morning of April 19, 1973 on his journal as follows:

So the day came, after months of being manhandled by mock interrogators, shoved into all sorts of wild and inhospitable places on Earth, and even having another round of drilling from my old Drill Sergeant during my days in the Marines, I found myself having breakfast with the other two who were to man the lander.

We ate the traditional ham, bacon, eggs and orange juice two hours before the flight in the wee hours of the morning, and then after that we were strapped into our suits and stuck in another waiting period as the booster itself was being prepared at the launch pad.

As soon as we were told to carry our mobile oxygen supplies and head over outside to the bus waiting for us, you couldn't believe how I just wanted out of that waiting room and into the Saturn V rocket that would shoot us to our ship which I would be the Captain of.

By God you wouldn't believe how I felt when I first saw the booster from the windows of the bus, it had the lander and the habitation module in a big fairing, we were apparently supposed to board this thing through the top of the fairing.

I remembered Bill asking 'Where's the launch escape tower on this thing?' and Jebediah simply replied 'We won't be needing launch escape towers' and I simply laughed.

By the time we were marshaled out of the bus and into the launch tower, I had this odd feeling inside my gut that I wanted this mission to fail on the ground with us alive, but then again this mission would be what other astronauts would wish for to be in, and I was handed that privilege by being in the Marines and the Air Force.

As we took the elevator to the top of the rocket, we could hear the ghostly howl of the wind being that high up, and I would be the one to hear it the most between us three for I was the last one to be strapped in.

Once we were strapped in and the doors were shut, we simply wondered what would happen next, what type of life we could find on that world, and what kind of history we're making?

This hazy feeling, this attempt at imagining how to execute this year long mission was disturbed by chirps from Mission Control through the earplugs, I swore that I ended up being so dazed just trying to contemplate how serious this mission was that I never knew we were off the pad until I heard 'Vehicle is at Maximum Aerodynamic Pressure' through the earplugs.

And then I felt a strong punch in my gut a few moments after that as staging occurred, trust me when I say that it felt like 'WHAM!' as the first stage decoupled and the second stage's uprated J2 engines kicked into gear.

Soon enough we were in orbit, waiting for the rendezvous with the propulsion stack of the Apollo cruiser, trust me when I say that I shed a tear upon seeing the brand new interplanetary ship of ours as it was being tended to by a SIV-B refueling module.

Our own craft was guided by a bunch of thruster modules placed at the bottom, we were to be at the front end of the stack and in between us and the main habitation module would be a hub docking joint that could dock four Apollo modules, and five once we were decoupled and sent down into a planet fall.

As we heard the call outs by mission control that we have docked and we are to transfer to the habitation module, I couldn't help but drool at the advanced systems placed in this ship, there was no way they pulled this off with only two or so years of planning.

We waited for the other two modules to dock with us, and thankfully NASA had allowed us to bring up to five kilograms of entertainment materials, I brought my old toys out of curiosity as to how they would work in space, I also brought magazines and books.

When the Apollo Orbital Module was docked, we welcomed Ares, John, and Bob into the ship, they called me 'Captain', and then when the Apollo Shuttle docked -and trust me when I say that I waited for it eagerly like a kid waiting for Christmas morning - I could not help myself at staring at the Apollo Shuttle with its sleek wings, its beefed up exterior that looked more like a ship made out of whatever our bottom heatshields were made out of rather than a normal Apollo CSM.

I was surprised to find out that four astronauts had comfortably fit in the Apollo Shuttle with one more empty seat for a fifth astronaut, I was somewhat jealous of Jerry, Danny, Desmond, and Edmund, they were flying the most advanced Apollo module to date.

I immediately briefed them on the mission and even said a prayer or two and quoted John F. Kennedy, mainly the thing about asking for God's blessing on this hazardous and greatest adventure.

We then told to take up our positions three hours later as the powerful J2-Aerospike engines were about to be unleashed, and boy did those designers really build a hell of an engine, I heard that these engines had the same output of an uprated J2-A but had twice the efficiency.

I was surprised to see that even after the burn, most of the fuel tanks were still attached to the sides of the propulsion stack, mainly because the engines were so efficient that the fuel tanks had enough fuel for the orbital insertion burn.

But there was six months in between the Trans-Planetary Insertion burn and the orbital insertion burn, most of which were spent playing ping pong in zero gravity and conducting experiments with my kid's toys to see how they operated in space, our rations were simple, somewhat odd looking, but tasty nonetheless, but it did feel somewhat cramped inside the habitation module, so much so that we tended to stay in our designated modules.

We received news on Earth from Mission Control who had allowed us to talk to our loved ones, I think I was the only bachelor in the crew, I was too busy fighting and flying to be a lover, so that left me with no one to talk to on Earth while the others had worried wives and children to reassure.

These six months went past idly, but we received the order through our earpieces around October that our orbital insertion burn was about to begin, and the first thing I did was to look out the window, and that's when I laid my eyes on that mysterious world.

There was radio silence for an hour or so, even as the Flight Director was hammering at out earpieces to respond, I was the one to respond with the words "Houston, we have a turtle over here, a big one."

"Say again?" a confused Flight Director said.

"The planet, damn it, it's a flat world on top of a turtle and four elephants, why didn't we see this before?" was my response.

"We thought it was a rock formation or something." I remembered Jebediah adding.

Our insertion burn was spent staring out the window with our mouths open, it really was a flat world on top of a living turtle with elephants on top of the shell, and the world sat on the top of the four elephants, it was surreal, and we were supposed to land on it.

Edmund patted me on the back and said "Congratulations, captain, you have the greatest expedition at hand."

I saluted and said, "Thanks, Chief Engineer." and laughed.

I was to land at that thing, and now the Flight Director wanted us to land as soon as we can in order to discover more about this planet, we noted that it had the same gravity as Earth and the same atmosphere, at least based on the readings of our sensors and scanners.

We were supposed to land on this thing, I kept repeating myself to that over and over and over again, up to the point that I ended up uttering the words 'We are going to land on this thing' repeatedly causing Bill to wonder if I had went mad, I was only nervous, but somewhat also excited.

An hour after orbital insertion, we were told to man our lander, Mission Control told us that we would find ourselves swung underneath the turtle and then we would be going in for an entry.

We heard the docking ports shut and our lander detached, you won't ever believe how we felt executing this mission of being the first humans on another world that could have life on it.

We did not know how to speak their language, but we were to adapt by showing peaceful gestures, I guess that was how the locals and Columbus interacted, it might not end well for us, but we were armed and dangerous.

We heard readouts, call outs, countdowns, and other declarations of Mission Control as we made the swing underneath the turtle and then we found ourselves ascending to a high altitude of over the flat world, and then that mass of green and blue, much like our Earth, began to become bigger on our windows.

The craft turned a hundred and eighty degrees in order to have its heat shield facing the atmosphere, we were about to enter a world that was just like ours but was not.

This reentry was nerve racking to say the least, our lander could have broken up at any minute, this was no thin atmosphere, this was as thick as our own atmosphere. As far as we're concerned, we might run into humans down there!

We felt the parachute deploy, it was an upward tug as we began to be slowed down by the wind. I looked out the window and saw a huge hill area, like those I saw in the south of England during a family vacation, and there was even this notable landmark, it was that of a white horse on one of the hills.

"Houston, we are descending through the atmosphere and landing on…my God, Houston, there's a civilization here!" I exclaimed as I saw wooden houses and even a railway line in the distance.

I heard that the moment of discovery of that planet became the most nerve racking moments within the halls of Mission Control, the Pentagon, and the White House, and also the United Nations to some extent, or so what I've heard.

An argument began swirling within Mission Control on whether or not they should keep broadcasting to the public on the status of the mission, and the funny thing is that I could hear them!

But I did my job anyhow regardless of what politicking was going on back on Earth, however given the existence of a civilization within our present surroundings, the first thing I told my crew to do would be to get out of our spacesuits and just wear normal civilian clothing.

Out scanners showed an air composition exactly like that of our own, as well as radiation levels that are equal to our own, so yeah it's safe for us to walk around without our spacesuits that made us look like…well…spacemen, but there was this unusual radiation that did not seem to affect life on this world, although I'm not quite sure if we're going to be turned to roasted meat as soon as we stepped outside.

I was somewhat bold, brave, and stupid for just grabbing for the hatch and twisting the handle, once I removed my spacesuit and flight suit underneath and was left with a plain old boring long sleeve civilian polo shirt and black slacks.

"James, what the hell are you doing!?" I remembered Bill exclaiming, but it was too late, I pushed the hatch open and took a deep breath of air.

"Look, the air is similar to our own and I'm not dead yet." I told the two as I climbed out through the hatch and went down the ladder of the lander to reach the surface.

I went back in to grab my Snoopy cap which had the earpiece and microphone, "Houston, this is Apollo Lander, the environment here is exactly like Earth, about to conduct an EVA."

I hoped that the orbit of the Apollo Cruiser would mean that our messages and pictures down here could be brought back to Earth, however I do believe that there's a bit of a delay between the communications.

You would not believe our surprise at receiving a message from Earth, "This is Houston, Apollo Lander, you are…based on the data your scanners are broadcasting back here…you are clear for EVA."

Bill, Jeb, and I ended up staring at one another, "Alright, who's going out first?" asked Bill.

"I would." I said as I opened the locker where we kept the small arms, I brought a revolver with me for defense, oh boy how I wished for a laser gun like those in the movies, but I only have a old Colt peacemaker revolver from the days of the Old West. Heh, cowboy astronaut, who'd knew?

"Just don't start an interplanetary war now, cowboy!" said Jeb in jest, to which I simply nodded and laughed.

We were all to be armed with these bulky low frequency radios, a walkie talkie as how they like to call it, which allowed me to keep in contact with the lander, and through the lander, the Apollo Cruiser, and through the Apollo Cruiser, Mission Control.

I went out, that's it, I threw all hell to the wind and climbed down the lander and felt the soft green grass beneath my feet, I actually spoke into the handheld radio and said "So much for a small step for Armstrong, now this is a big leap for mankind!" At that point in time, I must have been the most unprofessional NASA astronaut ever, after all I hid my firearm in one of the deep pockets of my slacks.

By the time those words have reached Mission Control, the next words must have left them in confusion, "Houston, uh…there's a witch descending on a broomstick…yeah, she has a pointy hat, black dress and all…and…uh…"

###

For the teen witch known as Tiffany Aching, the witch of the Chalk, her day had been busy as with all the other usual days, after being called by a frantic Mister Doward after his pregnant wife had gone into labor and they needed a midwife quickly, she was flying to old Misses Janston to help her clean her house.

But all the plans for the day had been put aside when she saw something burn up in the sky as she flew on her broomstick, at first she thought it was a shooting star, that is until it headed straight down to the ground and had huge somethings which popped out from the top, which had the similar effect of how a certain feegle used her clothes to land softly on the ground.

She would not have known what an Apollo Lander was, or what 'Rockwell', 'NASA', and 'Boeing' meant, or how did that thing even drop from the sky, but she knew that she was the witch of the Chalk and this thing could be another magical encounter.

When Tiffany was nine she had an encounter with the Faerie Queen - in which she invaded the Faerie world with a frying pan to save her brother, when she was eleven she had beaten the Hiver - a supposedly invincible opponent that had possessed her, when she was thirteen she kissed the Wintersmith, when she was sixteen, she had beaten the Cunning Man, when she was eighteen she had beaten the elves - again, and now it could be said that at eighteen she also ran into a spaceship - well, a lander technically.

Tiffany had spotted a young man nearing his middle ages standing outside the thing, staring at her, they ended up staring at one another, she approached the man, "Excuse me, but who are you?"

The man answered, "I am James Thompson, madam, and you would be?"

"Tiffany Aching, the witch of the Chalk." said Tiffany, "Did you just come from that thing?"

"Oh this thing?" the man turned slightly towards it, "Yeah, I am an inventor and I just made a flying house…I see that you also fly."

Tiffany had her own suspicions on the man's claim, but she can sense a lie and he was not lying - it was at this point that a pair of C.I.A agents who trained the man would have high fived and exclaimed 'YEAH!'

"So, I heard that this neighborhood was good…this uh…" the man said.

"Welcome to the Chalk then, I do believe that you are moving here then?" she asked.

"Oh yes, uh Tiffany, I am moving here and I hope that I could settle here." said James.

"Have you met with the Baron then? He owns the land and I think you should seek permission with him first." said Tiffany.

"Oh, yeah, right…so, where is the Baron?" asked James.

"The Baron's castle is that way." Tiffany pointed to a castle in the distant horizon.

Something about this man and his unusual house has piqued Tiffany's curiosity, she had decided to follow this man, but without having to let go of her other responsibilities.

"Say, since you can fly…I'm sure you can fly me to the Baron's castle on the…broomstick?" said James.

Tiffany does not usually allow others to fly with her unless if the situation is either an emergency or unusual, and right now it may be both, something about the man's overall demeanor did not make sense to Tiffany.

"Alright, you may go with me, I'll bring you to the Baron." said Tiffany.

###

Now, you may be thinking that I was joking when I said 'witch' but I meant what I said. So apparently this world has magic and things which we imagined as a kid, and I always imagined of a good witch carrying me away on her broomstick, and then when I was a young strapping lad out of college I was flying the Sabre against those communists over Korea.

The flight to the Baron's castle reminded me way too much of the times I was in an intense dogfight, you won't believe the many times I asked this sweet sounding young woman, this Tiffany Aching, if I could fly her broomstick.

Eventually she stopped midway, allowed the broomstick to hover just above the ground, and asked "Mister Thompson, why do you want to fly my broomstick?"

I sighed, "I'm sorry, Miss Aching, but I just miss flying."

Tiffany sighed and told me, "You're the only person that said that they flew and is not a witch."

I smiled and shrugged, "Once you've tasted flight, you'll always have your eyes turned skywards, eager and longing to go back where you've just come from."

Tiffany looked down to the ground for a moment and hopped off the hovering broomstick, she said "Here, I want to see how you fly."

I sat at the front and she sat near the bristles, once I knew how to do the basic pitch, yaw, and hover maneuvers, I flew both of us to the Baron's castle while zigzagging through houses and even buzzing the guard tower nearby twice, it really felt like the good old days over Korea.


	6. Part 05 - Apollo Lunar

At around Ground Mission Time of five hours, or two hours after the reported EVA of Mission Commander James R. Thompson, a direct mission order from Houston had reached the Apollo Cruiser, which by then was on a circular orbit on top of the Discworld.

Apollo Orbital Mission Commander Ares P. Bacon recounted the mission later on when the gag order was lifted in an interview with CBS news;

At about two hours after we've heard of the EVA activities and silliness of our Mission Commander - I mean I think he was pulling our leg when he said he saw a witch and all - the Flight Director issued an order for us to execute the secondary objective of the mission; to try to understand two things, the moon and why is the sun of this world smaller than our moon.

The Apollo Orbital module was similar to the one used on the other Apollo mission, but this one had an uprated Service Module engine and can land on the surface of moons.

John was the module pilot while Bob was a mission specialist in studying astrophysics, and when we entered through the drogue docking port from the habitation module, I remembered Bob looking out the window and saying, "You know, I don't trust that sun."

I simply replied to him as I strapped myself in, "Me neither."

Bob was shaking his head saying "No sun can be that small, I mean the smallest red dwarf stars are said to be as big as Jupiter."

"But this world is just ten thousand kilometers in diameter, right?" asked John as he went through the control panel.

"Yes." said Bob in a frustrated manner, it's kinda obvious that he was having some sort of breakdown on the puzzle.

"Look, there's life down there…" I tried to calm them down by pointing out that this world would wipe the slate clean of everything we knew about space.

But then Bob interrupted me by saying, "We need to mount a mission to the moon and then to the sun."

I remembered at that moment my capsule pilot staring at Bob to my left - the capsule pilot was to my right and I was in the middle of these two - and saying "I don't think we'll have enough fuel to risk this ship, we don't even know its gravitational profile."

"Well-" Bob faltered, "The thing about stars is that they have nuclear fusion going on inside them, I mean you know nuclear fission right?"

"Hiroshima, my father had been there before and after. And so what then?" I prompted.

"Well, nuclear fusion is fusing two atoms together, stars fuse hydrogen into helium, and this is what produces the energy. This would require a lot of gravitational pull to push these atoms together, and in order to have a big gravitational pull, the star has to be...well, big!" explained Bob, "Well, that sun is small, so how the hell did it achieve fusion at that rate!?"

I patted him on the shoulder, "Calm down, you'll suck up all our oxygen supply!" I then turned to my pilot and said "Undock the spacecraft from the habitat module."

We heard the mechanisms move as the Apollo Orbiter undocked from the habitat module, our reaction control systems pushed us away from the Apollo Cruiser, that's when the designated caretakers - that's how we ended up calling them - chirped through our earpieces, "This is Apollo Cruiser, Apollo Orbiter we wish you good luck and godspeed."

I replied, "This is Apollo Orbiter, thank you Apollo Cruiser, tell Mission Control that we're on our way."

We begun our Trans-…uh…lunar(?) injection burn, ten minutes into our burn, Bob started tapping on the multi-function display, or MFD, with his finger like how you would tap on a broken gas gauge, "Uh…Bacon, we have something peculiar here…"

I looked over at the MFD, our engines were not consuming fuel at all, and yet we can feel the orbiter accelerating towards the moon.

Bob was eagerly, one could even say religiously, checking the scanners, "Bacon, you may want to look at the instrument readouts."

The readouts are suggesting that the moon might have an atmosphere based on the how sun light was bouncing off of it, not in the same way that our moon reflects the light of the sun, but how a thin - but breathable atmosphere - would have bounced light off.

As we came closer to the moon, the light bouncing off atmosphere was getting visible through the window, I looked at the mission time and it has only been less than an hour, I would hazard a wild guess that the orbital diameter of this moon in relative to the size of the Discworld would have been the equivalent of a Medium Earth Orbit for this planet.

I reported to Mission Control, usually those guys back at Houston would be keeping an eye out for us and would do all sorts of call outs and readouts, but we haven't heard anything from them, I mean even with some time delay of about two to three minutes, they should have buzzed in right now.

"Houston, this is Apollo Orbiter, the moon of this Discworld seems to have an atmosphere, and apparently our engines are not consuming fuel at all, should we commit to a landing?"

The speed at which the response was received kinda spooked us, it was as if it was going at either faster than light or something was changing the very fabric, the very shape, of the space around us.

"This is Houston - Flight, we have received your report and advise heavily against conducting a landing, I repeat, you are NO GO at landing at this time, commit to orbital insertion and wait for instructions."

I saw Bob sighing and looking really disappointed like a kid being told that he's not allowed to go out, he was shaking his head and looking crossed, "Houston, what is going on down there?" he said.

The response of the Flight Director was unexpected, it was received by all channels based on the first few words that came out through my earpiece, "This is Houston - Flight to all members of the Apollo Interplanetary, we are speaking with the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense at this moment, it seems that we have stumbled into something greater than what we've expected.

As of this moment, all are advised to hold their objectives, President Nixon is on the phone with the Pentagon and with senior NASA Administrators, we'll patch you in with further information as soon as we receive them."

Bob lamented, "Huh, Nixon is still in office."

"Well, if you're the guy that told America to go to the Discworld, no one would want to impeach you during the mission now would you?" replied John.

Nixon survived the House Impeachment proceedings, I remembered reading on the newspapers much to the outrage of the editors, but the thing is that - I guess - he's the guy that phoned Armstrong on the moon and now he's the guy that wants to use this Discworld exploration as a trophy to show that he brought America above and beyond. Well, I don't care about politics and surely did not care at that time.

What we were concerned about would be the current postponement order floated by the Flight Director, something which Bob wanted to go against.

By then, Bob had activated the cameras attached to the Apollo Orbiter, particularly the ones pointed straight down at the surface of the moon as we begun our orbital insertion into a polar low moon orbit.

The insertion took about three minutes to accomplish, my pilot remarked "This mission is going rather quickly, well this moon is small compared to ours."

The small diameter of the moon meant that we were going around it once in every two minutes, so after an hour of passing through the moon over and over again, Bob had pressed his face close to the screen and exclaimed, "I think there's signs of life down there, and there's even a…oh God, I think the Discworld has conducted their own lunar landing."

I craned my head to see the screen and saw a somewhat fuzzy photo of creatures on the moon, they looked like small gray dragons that were as gray as the surface of the moon and some photos showed that these dragons had actually spewed fire.

But what was intriguing at the time for us would be the tattered flag on the surface of the moon, all torn up and eaten by those dragons, not far from it would be a banana peel - I wish I was joking but there was something banana peel shaped down there - and human footprints.

I shook my head, "Houston, this is Apollo Orbiter, we have a very urgent request, our cameras have spotted life on the moon including a flag and a banana peel, something tells us that this planet has achieved a lunar landing. We request to go for landing."

The reply came promptly, "This is Houston - Flight, we've considered the risks posed by the creatures your cameras have sent back here and while we advise against the landing, we suggest that you drop an item, a cube sat or maybe a used up tank in order to see how the creatures react."

The Flight Director had a point, these things may have eaten the sorry souls who have stepped on the moon the last time, but the problem was that we have nothing to throw at them.

"We 'll land on the moon and immediately take off at the first sign of trouble." I reasoned with Houston.

I heard a sigh at the other end, "This is Houston-Flight, we're giving you a go for a landing attempt, remember that safety is your priority, and we're advising you to high tail it as soon as the dragons try to attack you."

I turned to John and nodded, "Go ahead, throw us into retrograde, try to land us as close to the remnants as possible."

After swinging around the moon for the last time before retrograde, the engines kicked into gear, killing our horizontal velocity and bringing us into a a gentle vertical descent that should land us ten meters away from the remnants site.

The dragons - oh good God - began surrounding us like how bees surrounded their hive as we descended through the thin atmosphere, we could thank our lucky stars that our fuel is not being consumed by the engines and that we're not being eaten by the dragons.

John began calling out our altitude as we descended, we felt the thud beneath us as we've touched the surface of this odd moon.

John was shaking his head and disbelief, "You know we could have burned up right there, I mean this moon has an atmosphere and yet…"

In the horizon we could see the Discworld in the same way that the Apollo 8 astronauts saw Earth rise, I pointed at the window and said, "Gentlemen, that is a turtle with four elephants and a flat world, we should stop asking how and instead observe."

I peeked through the hatch window, the dragons that surrounded us had flown elsewhere, I checked the readouts and apparently the atmosphere really is breathable enough, but I would not risk inhaling this odd atmosphere just yet.

We were all in our standard space suits with the backpack for oxygen, and I was the first one to unlatch the EVA hatch and pop my head out. The first thing I did was chirp into our comm lines "I'm going on an EVA to check on the flag."

Houston chirped in, "This is Houston - Flight, are the dragons nearby?"

"Nope, but they did surround us during descent, but they only observed us." I reported.

"Good, you are go for EVA." said the Flight Director.

I climbed down the ladder of our Apollo lander, it was basically an Apollo capsule and a shortened Command Service Module sitting on top of a another bigger Service Module Lander that had four engines underneath.

I gently approached the remnants, it was indeed a fallen tattered flag and a banana, and the footprints looked human and one pair looked notably like that of a monkey of some sorts, maybe an Orangutan.

I held the tattered flag up and planted it onto the ground, I could see what looked like a hippopotamus on a side of the shield, though only less than half of the flag survived, but the words 'City of Ankh-' survived.

I was buzzing at Mission Control on my findings as I moonwalked - yes, much puns intended - back to our lander, "Houston, this is Ares Bacon on an EVA, there is a flag here and they have sent people here, the flag belonged to some City of Ankh something, the flag is torn and less than half survived."

The reply came, "This is Houston-Flight, we have noted your report and advise you on taking as much photos of your findings, we're giving you a go for your next objective to observe the sun of the Discworld on the way back to the Cruiser."

"But what about the fact that they have sent people here?" I asked.

"That is a political problem, the President will be on the air to address the nation within the next few hours, that is all, proceed with next objective once all objectives on the moon are achieved." said Houston.

I radioed the lander, "Hey, Bob, I suggest you start collecting your samples."

###

(A/N: Yes, initially in the earlier versions of the story Nixon was booted out of office, however that was changed - you'll see why. And of course if you've read The Last Hero, you'll know who the footprints belonged to and - most importantly - whose banana it was.)


	7. Part 06 - Chain of Command

" _Good evening, America, we are interrupting our normal programming to give way to a televised address from the Oval Office which is set to happen in fifteen minutes._ " - Walter Cronkite, CBS News, October 21 1973, 5:45 pm, Eastern Time.

It is often said that the world is like a stage, then therefore historical events are its plays, and there were plenty of chaotic scenes spattered across key locations as information was received by NASA and passed through the channels at Washington D.C.

At Ground Mission Time after orbital encounter of five, nearly six, hours, the discoveries of the astronauts on the Discworld and on its moon were being received with awe and disbelief, NASA had decided to suspend the broadcasts from Mission Control and had told the press to wait for a press conference.

President Nixon, who has miraculously survived an impeachment vote in the House of Representatives - and won the 1972 elections by a landslide, immediately called for a meeting with the Administrators of NASA as well as the top brass of the Pentagon, all the while being aboard Air Force One en route to Washington D.C.

The transcript and descriptions of the meeting by the countless of men and women who were there during the nervous times - probably second only to the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor - are compiled in order to paint a picture of what had happened.

President Nixon was in Texas, one of the many unexpected 'safe states' for the Democrats to suddenly swing towards the Republicans in the flurry of keeping Nixon in the White House for the mission, when the relatively new Administrator of NASA, Dr. James C. Fletcher, called.

"Mister President," a nervous Fletcher on the other end of the phone had said while Nixon was in the Presidential Limousine, "as your chief space sciences adviser, I would say that-…sir, we've encountered the Discworld and it has life on it sir, including what looks like a possible space program."

Inside the Presidential Limousine would be the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Advisor, and both men had recounted how the President covered the mouth piece of the phone and said "Gentlemen, we may have life on our hands out there and our astronauts are down there."

The Secretary of Defense reached into his black leather bag and pulled out the back up plans made by the Pentagon just in case if any of their astronauts were to be detained against their will by the denizens of that planet, all the while Nixon replied "Dr. Fletcher, I am on my way to Washington D.C, I would be calling for a telephone meeting with the Pentagon and NASA."

After Nixon had hung up the phone, he told the driver to head back to Lackland Air Force Base, and then he told his aide to phone up Lackland AFB to have Air Force One ready.

The Secretary of Defense then handed a bunch of documents in a folder, "Mister President, I would like to brief you on the plans made by a joint committee of the Air Force, the Marines, and the Army."

"In case of what exactly? Secretary, this looks like a plan for an interplanetary D-Day." was Nixon's response after going through the plans.

"Mister President, let's say that the locals are hostile and took our astronauts hostage, the joint committee had suggested that we use the Air Force's Big Blue Gemini to mount a rescue mission." explained the Secretary of Defense.

"Oh hell, the Soviets had landed a man on the moon, what makes this plan impossible?" Nixon remarked, "We shall wait and see how the situation unfolds, only then we will know what to do."

By the time the Presidential Limousine had reached the air force base, the news had somehow reached the hourly news bulletin, NASA had decided to comment that there was a remarkable discovery and plenty of people across the world had begun to have gotten hold of the information when Air Force One took off from the air force base.

Nixon had spent the whole flight to Joint Base Andrews on the telephone, "Are we all here, gentlemen?" Nixon was the first one to speak.

"Yes, Mister President, the Joint Chiefs are right here." said the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman.

"NASA is here, Mister President." said Dr. Fletcher.

"Now, Dr. Fletcher, can you please give us a summary of your discoveries." said Nixon.

Fletcher was said to have consulted his notes before speaking, which explained the momentary silence in the recording, "Mister President, at Ground Mission Time of Six months, one day, and thirteen hours, Mission Commander Thompson had begun their lander descent, he then conducted his EVA immediately after touch down an hour after the retrograde mark."

"Thompson reported to have interacted with the locals and was on his way to supposedly meet one of the local political chiefs who was referred to as 'Baron' according to the reports of Lander pilot Jebediah and geological sciences mission specialist Bill.

Two hours after the descent of the Lander, the Flight Director had given the Apollo Orbiter a go to explore the moon, initially the Orbiter Mission Commander Ares Bacon had reported that their sensors have detected the moon to have a thin but breathable atmosphere, as they executed their orbital insertion burn to an orbit about fifty kilometers above the surface, their cameras have spotted footprints and remnants of a moon exploration as well as wildlife on the moon.

As of this moment, Ares Bacon and mission specialist Bob is on an EVA on the moon."

"Okay, anything else on the Discworld itself?" asked Nixon.

"Mister President, the last few words from Mission Commander Thompson was 'Houston, uh…there's a witch descending on a broomstick…yeah, she has a pointy hat, black dress and all…and…uh…' before it was cut off." reported Dr. Fletcher, "Further reports from the other two points that there is on the Discworld…what we call 'magic', but it seems that this 'magic' is as normal as our fundamental laws of physics, which I guess would explain the fact that the Discworld is a turtle with elephants on top."

That fact had already been in circulation ever since the first report from NASA during the 1970s, however it was earlier dismissed as caused by poor image quality, but now they have confirmation that it was indeed what it was.

"Any other peculiarities noted?" asked Nixon.

"Yes sir, Orbiter Mission Commander Bacon had noted that their engines are working but is not consuming fuel." said Dr. Fletcher, "And that the planet itself is emanating this powerful unknown radiation that, so far, is harmless to our astronauts or to the people living there."

As Nixon was about to speak, Fletcher made some weird noise as if he'd forgotten to say something, "Oh and the Mission Commander Thompson was last seen…uh…flying on a broomstick."

Nixon laughed, "Is this for real, Dr. Fletcher?"

Fletcher nodded and said "Yes, Mister President, we have just begun decoding a video data taped and broadcast via Slow Scan Television, and it shows that Thompson somehow ended up flying this thing, the broomstick, in the distance like some fighter jet."

On the Pentagon's end, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force chuckled, "Sorry, Mister President, but I knew Mister Thompson when he transferred to the Air Force from the Marine Corps Aviation, he was twice reprimanded for buzzing a Carrier bridge and a United Nations watchtower at the 38th Parallel."

Nixon was legendary for his skills at poker, said to have funded his first congressional campaign entirely with poker winnings when he was in the US Navy during the war, his poker face showed during the meeting, "Gentlemen, we have life on something that breaks the laws of physics all in all, and we have American citizens down there."

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs spoke up, "Has the Secretary of Defense briefed you on our contingency plans?"

"Yes, he has, and I cannot believe that you want to send what is basically an Interplanetary D-Day to mount a rescue mission." said Nixon.

"But Mister President, we have the resources and manpower to mount one immediately, we'll be using a modified Big Gemini and a weapons platform variant of the Mobile Orbital Laboratory, we'll have one pilot and eleven troopers in the Big Gemini, and possibly an extra six in the MOL. The flight would only take two months since it would use a faster orbital approach." said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

"We'll save that for the worst, however I suggest that you do keep your rescue team ready just in case." said Nixon.

"But, how about contact with the locals?" asked Dr. Fletcher.

"We'll just use the Mission Commander's cover, whatever cover he used to convince the witch he had encountered that they were not from out there, I mean that is what I believe he had used." said Nixon, "Has the lander crew been given intelligence and espionage training?"

"Yes, Mister President." said Fletcher, "They are trained to use several aliases and cover, plus they have been given enough supplies to last for a month in their lander."

Nixon nodded and said "Alright, we shall keep an eye on their situation, and only then can we make a decision. I will be going on air to address the nation, I heard that rumors have begun circulating about the current events. Thank you, gentlemen."

Nixon had hung up the phone as the Andrews Joint Base had appeared on the horizon and as the plane had begun its descent.

###

From Mission Commander James Thompson's journal:

Now this place, the Chalk, I'm telling you, it's a lot like South England during my vacation there, and I took in the scenery as I piloted what has got to be the most useful tool in any war; a flying broomstick, at least you can have a faster response time when the enemy shows up while you're cleaning up the Barracks, the only problem is figuring out how to shoot down your enemy.

Anyhow we flew to the Baron's castle and when we landed I can recall the look on Tiffany's face, that look of surprise and a bit of anger at how I flew, "Mister Thompson, I do not know who you are exactly but you just nearly injured someone I know and-…"

"Let me guess,your beau?" I replied.

Funny thing, while I was flying the broomstick - actually now that I thought of it, it's nothing like a normal plane, it's like it goes where you point it, like a rocket - buzzing the guard tower nearby, I have absolutely nearly hurt a young man sitting on a patch of hill, Tiffany called out his name "Preston!" as I nearly crashed into him, luckily I pulled up.

Tiffany blushed, "He's just back from Ankh Morpork for the spring."

I laughed, "I've got a sister back home and I know that blush." I then shook my head, "Anyhow, I think we should meet this Baron."

Tiffany knocked on the door of the castle and a somewhat middle aged and well dressed assistant appeared, though he stared at me somewhat before saying "Miss Aching, how may I help you?"

"We have a newcomer to the Chalk, and he wants to meet with the Baron to introduce himself, this is his land after all." said Tiffany.

The assistant stepped aside and said "Allow me to lead you to him, Miss Aching."

We were led through this big castle in the middle of a green plain area, I mean a large gray building in the middle of all that green, either an eyesore or Washington D.C on a map, or both.

Just as we were being led to the Baron, we encountered a young-ish blonde woman whom the assistant referred to as, "Baroness Leticia Keepsake Chumsfanleigh, this man here is a new comer to the Chalk and intends to reside here."

I bowed my head, "I am James Thompson, Baroness." I said.

The Baroness smiled, "Ah, welcome to the Chalk then, I do believe you're on your way to meet my husband then."

"Yes, madam." said the assistant.

You know, now I thank God that these people could speak English, at least I can understand them and they could understand me.

This Baroness then went to a door at the end of the corridor, and came out with a young man of her age, the Baron I presumed, "Ah, Baron Roland, your grace." said the assistant.

"Miss Aching, a good day to you." said the Baron, Tiffany did not have to bow nor curtsy by the looks of it, though she did bow a slight curtsy but not like the actual bow of the assistant.

"Roland, James Thompson here is a new comer to the Chalk and he wished to introduce himself to you." said Tiffany.

"Is that so?" said the Baron, "Well, who's house have you bought?"

I smiled, "Well, Baron, my house..sort of flew here, I'm an inventor you see and I just came up with a flying house…or rather how to send a house across the skies."

Roland turned to Tiffany and said, "Is this man making fun of me?"

"No, what he's saying is true, I saw his house falling from the sky myself." said Tiffany.

Roland nodded and seemed to have thought through some things for a while, "Miss Aching, may I have a word with you in private?" he then turned to the assistant and said, "Please do keep our guest company."

The Baron, the Baroness, and the witch had all entered the Baron's room, or office, leaving me with the assistant, whom I noticed had some weird choice for socks, "New York Yankees!?" I swore it looked like the symbol of the New York Yankees.

The assistant looked left and then right before leaning in towards me and saying "You're from space, aren't you?"

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, I should have kept my mouth shut, "And you sound like you came from New York!" I exclaimed.

He clasped my mouth shut and looked around him again, "Are you from the United States that I came from?"

Now I wonder how did this man, who looked like he was a close aide of the Baron, has come from the United States, my theory was that this weird planet on top of a turtle was used to these interplanetary visits…I mean I've read some weird science fiction stories of crossing dimensions and things.

I nodded, he removed his hand from my mouth and I said "For God's sake's man, how did you get here?"

"Well how did you get here?" the assistant asked.

"By a spaceship, the Apollo program, when did you leave Earth?" I asked.

"1963…wait, who won the World Series that year?" he asked.

I scratched around my head, "Uh…Los Angeles Dodgers."

"I-…oh boy, I thank God that Earth has finally come to rescue me." said the odd assistant.

"How did you get here?" I asked.

"That depends, are you with the C.I.A or somebody else?" he asked.

"I worked with the Marines before going to the Air Force and being picked up by NASA." I said.

The assistant paced around the hallway for awhile, "Alright, the C.I.A in 1963 had begun experimenting with some things which are theoretical, teleportation to be precise."

My mouth dropped open, "You mean like the ones in Star Trek?"

"Star Trek? Is that some science fiction thing? Well if you mean teleportation like the ones in science fiction comics, then yeah." said the assistant, annoyed, "My name is Jonathan Reacher by the way, I served as an Intelligence Officer during the Second World War in Europe, you won't believe what the Germans had tried experimenting on."

"James Thompson, Captain in the U.S. Air Force, Astronaut in NASA." I shook hands with him.

"Good to meet you, now…I have a serious question, was there a reported explosion somewhere in the Mojave desert around 1963?" he asked.

"Yeah of course, but the officials say that it was a test for a non-nuclear device." I said, much to his anger.

"That was no bomb, that was them trying to hide their failure, those idiots teleported me here and I was forced to fend for myself using what I learned in espionage." he said.

If this man had survived the war as an intelligence officer, what else can he survive? I guess a simple teleportation mishap is nothing more than a mere annoyance.

"How did you know that there would be an explosion?" I asked.

"It was part of our plan to blow up anything that went wrong and call it an accident." said Jonathan, "I'm telling you, I have a grudge with the C.I.A, the K.G.B, and this whole damn Cold War!"

"Was that what the research into teleportation was for?" I asked.

"Yes, mainly to find a way to get agents into Russia without having to, you know, fly over it with a spy plane only to crash." said Jonathan.

"Wait, what do you mean by a grudge with the K.G.B?" I asked.

"I just hate the Soviets." hissed Jonathan, "Anyhow, I think I would need to go now, just wait for the Baron."

Huh, what a weird guy, however coincidentally the door to the Baron's officer sunk open and out came the Baron, flanked by the Baroness and the witch. The Baron approached me and shook my hand, "Mister Thompson, welcome to the Chalk, while we do note the odd way of your moving in here, Tiffany has assured me that you're of no problem."

Oh good, so they trust that Tiffany the same way Nixon was trusted back in the 1972 elections, "I thank your vote of confidence in me, and I do hope that I would meet some of your citizens."

"Say, where did you come from?" the Baroness asked.

I faltered, "Well, I just came from the patch of forest nearby, I'm an inventor you see."

"At least now the Chalk has another bright mind, I have heard that you are a flyer to?." said the Baron with a smile, "You may go back to your…flying home, or rather your once flying home.'

I bowed, "Thank you."

The Baron turned to Tiffany and said, "Miss Aching, will you bring our guest back to his home, and Mister Thompson, do allow Miss Aching to fly this time."

###

The clacks, the wonderful invention that had allowed the Disc to be closer and smaller, information now flowed from one end to the other end instantaneously, especially after the arrest and death of Reacher Gilt.

Inside the Patrician's Palace, Lord Vetinari looks outside through the window and at the city which he has ruled and stabilized for decades, he may be slightly aging but he is still that sharp and fine figure of a tyrant.

A knock on his door interrupts his silence, "What is it, Drumknott?" Vetinari turned around to face the door.

"A encrypted Clacks message from one of our spies, my lord." said Drumknott while holding a piece of paper.

Vetinari reached for the paper and read through it, "Report from C.L.K, unusual new people, claim to have come from a flying house but really a space vessel similar to moon mission mounted before, is armed with gonne."

Vetinari laid the paper on the table, "Ah, is it that spy, Drumknott?"

"The one that has been, according to the Archancellor, teleported from another world, somewhat similar to their Roundworld experiment but a different one." said Drumknott.

"Yes and the one who was caught by Captain Carrot to have tried to steal money from the vaults of the Guild of Thieves, I knew I just had to use him." said Vetinari, "So, we now have…aliens visiting us?"

"I would not call them that, my lord, that is if our spy, Mister Reacher, is of their species, he has taken you into his confidence of explaining his predicament." said Drumknott.

"Interesting, and this species had developed weapons, the gonne to be precise, for everyday use?" said Vetinari, he himself was hit by a gonne fired by an assassin and was nearly killed.

"He himself had said that his species do use gonnes for everyday use, and our visitor in the Chalk was armed with one." said Drumknott.

"Our spy has good eyes, I don't think our visitor would keep the gonne on him where visible, I'd say our guest kept his gonne in his pocket." said Vetinari, "Or so I'd imagine."

"What should we do now?" asked Drumknott.

"There are times when the best thing to do is not to make a move until your opponent has, wouldn't you think so, Drumknott?" said Vetinari.

Drumknott nodded, "Oh yes, I'd think so too."

"Good, then tell our good spy to keep an eye on him, and maybe even allow him to introduce our world to them, I think that enough would keep them busy." said Vetinari, "Our spy came here with survival instincts in full swing, I do believe that our new visitors came here out of curiosity, and based on the data of Unseen University on a magic-less roundworld, I think our visitors would be too busy pondering about our world." said Vetinari.

"That is what I shall write to our spy, my lord." said Drumknott.

"And I do believe that by now Miss Aching has most likely summed our visitors up already, I do believe the witches are good with those things." remarked Vetinari, "Anyhow, do go now Drumknott."

As Drumknott walked away, Lord Vetinari sat down on his desk where a untouched game of Thud! was sitting, he knew that somehow they were the board and their visitors the player, but then there must be another one.

Why else would someone go this far? Conquest perhaps, but without an army? Then show off, just like during the old days of exploration when kingdoms raced to the edge of the Disc or to the center of the world, the Hub, by pouring the most amount of money on expeditions.

Whenever there's a race, it has to be a two horse race, Lord Vetinari knew that this is just the beginning, their spy has said something about a 'space race' which to Vetinari just translated to 'Exploration show off' with the word 'exploration' being silent.

Until then it's all his theories, but as with Vetinari, some of his theories may be right.

###

On the night of the 21st of October 1973, President Nixon went on air to address the curiosity of the public and of the world from the Oval Office, it was broadcast through the radio and TV and even made first page of the New Yorker, Washington Post, and New York Times the very next day.

"Good evening, my fellow Americans, I would like to address a topic of great concern for the American public and for the world, and allow me to speak as the commander in chief, your president, who has ordered this mission. The rumors are true that there is life on the mysterious planet that was spotted by space probes two years ago.

Our astronauts as of this moment are making contact with life and as such I am calling for calm in this time of anxiety and uncertainty, we have handled the Vietnam War, we have returned our boys home, we can return our astronauts home.

This is exploration just like how our history books have shown, it is not a place for the weak and we trust that our representatives, our ambassadors, that being our astronauts will handle the situation well if not, hopefully, perfectly.

My fellow Americans, and to the humans of the world, we have the situation under control, and while we stare in awe at the discoveries being made by the astronauts and with the rumors going around, we must keep ourselves level headed.

I understand that the video cutoff from Mission Control on national television had caused some worry and concern, the Administrator of NASA has assured me that they were not covering up anything and were only following regulations set in place in order to not cause a panic or mass hysteria.

Yes, it is a big space turtle with elephants on top and a flat world sitting on the top, yes it does have things which we call magic, however we must keep in mind that a man from the War would have called the historic mission of landing men on the moon, or of even sending a human being to space, as witchcraft.

We are humans and we humans tend to want to understand and observe things and I know it rattled our nerves, but we must allow for our astronauts to do their work and discover the truth, this is what this mission has been about, to find the truth.

To quote President Kennedy, 'We choose to go to the moon', and it is this same spirit that has drove us to choose to go to the Discworld, we set sail on this new sea for new knowledge and for new rights to be won, and it is this same sea, this same goal, and the same rights which we are fighting for. Why fly across the Atlantic? Why climb Mount Everest? Why land on the moon? Not because it is easy but because it is hard, and I repeat those words from President Kennedy and also repeat the spirit that has gotten us to the moon and over the Soviets.

I would like to remind the American public that the Soviets have gotten us into the Vietnam conflict, have gotten us into the Korean conflict before that one, and had caused a great uproar in the aftermath of the Second World War with the Berlin Blockade. I am warning the Soviets against using this new world as a chessboard for war, I am more than aware that they've landed a man on the moon and now we reach out our hand in peace asking them to explore the world with us in peace and to represent humanity in peace.

The question now is how we should handle this contact with the locals, our rules are simple, we are for peace and not for war, we trust that our astronauts would carry with them the identity of not just that of America but of the whole world."

It was at this point that Nixon was about to say something but then someone from behind the camera told him to cut off the speech.

"Thank you for listening, my fellow Americans and to the world, may we get through this peacefully." and the TV screens would cut to the seal of the Office of the President of the United States.

Nixon, who was quite frustrated at the interruption stood up and said "Alright, what is it now this time?"

The man who had interrupted him was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he had a folder with him, "Mister President, we may have committed an Intelligence mistake, sir."


	8. Part 07 - Mockba

The Red Bear was never quiet during the space exploration craze, in fact they were somewhat ahead than NASA in terms of planning, and most probably in terms of espionage and intelligence.

There had always been this disquieting thought inside all the turncoats and big wigs at Washington D.C, that the Soviets - who has already kicked their butts twice; Korea became a stalemate and Vietnam was a humiliation - could possibly cause another Sputnik crisis with the Discworld.

It was considered to be a joke at first when Wernher Von Braun himself had floated the possibility during an executive session with Congressmen that the Soviets could beat them to the Discworld when the 'leak' with the Air Force reconnaissance images occurred.

Korolev may have died in 1966, three years before Apollo 11, but his design that was more powerful than the Saturn V - at least in terms of a thrust-per-thrust basis but not in capability - the N-1 rocket was floated once more during the announcement of the discovery of the Disc.

As soon as the N-1 rocket was floated, with it came the initial designs for an interplanetary expedition all the way back from the 1950s, and the bloody and chaotic world of the Soviet Space Program was suddenly unified somewhat as soon as the images of the Discworld was broadcast on Soviet television.

The Soviet Space Program, unlike that of the Americans', did not have a single unifying agency or authority, rather it was sort of part of the Soviet Air Force but the competing design bureaus were being led by different people who would be more than happy to see the other design bureau leader's design fail rather than all of them succeeding.

The system changed when the Discworld incident occurred, the Soviets landed their first man on the moon by 1972 and had begun quickly advancing the design of their ambitious interplanetary spacecraft for a secret launch that had slipped through the watchful eyes of the United States, or at least when the pair of watchful eyes had forgotten their brain back at home.

This was the explanation given to President Nixon shortly after the broadcast interruption by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the President was said to have had steam hissing out of his ears.

"How in the hell could the Soviets built something like an interplanetary spaceship right underneath our noses?" was Nixon's first question, pounding his desk.

"Mister President, there was general consensus within the Central Intelligence Agency that this was a space station, similar to our Skylab program." said the Director, sliding surveillance photos of the supposed space station towards the President.

Nixon went through each of the photos, "Where is this supposed space station then?"

"We thought it burnt up and crashed into the Siberian tundra." the Director said with much embarrassment, "We were dead wrong."

"So where is it?" Nixon asked.

The Director looked up and out through the window behind the President and into the sky, "We cannot stop it, we're more concerned with what it's capable of."

Nixon crossed his arms, "So what's the second bad news?"

The Director steepled his fingers before reaching into his briefcase and pulling out an agent's record, "This man, Jonathan Reacher, was thought to have died in an explosion in the Mojave desert, an accident that occurred in a facility that was supposedly producing rocket fuel for the then in development Saturn V in 1963."

"But?" Nixon prompted.

"I have ordered documents into this supposed accident to be put in my office and apparently, mister President, my predecessor has had a program to develop a teleporter." said the Director, "They were not expecting for it to work, but when it may have worked, the whole facility was blown up."

"So why are you telling me this?" Nixon asked.

"CAPCOM, the Capsule Communication Flight Officer, at Houston had phoned up my office shortly a while ago stating that Mission Commander Thompson had inquired about an unusual local who was wearing a pair of New York Yankees socks and sounded like he came from New York." explained the Director, "Thompson had given a name, 'Jonathan Reacher', which had a match in our records, I know it is too early to assume, we still do not have a physical description of the man yet, however it is more probable than not that the teleportation worked."

"Is there any connection between this and the Soviets?" asked Nixon, who was noted to have been very nervous at that point by his aides.

The Director, who had been standing the whole time, pulled up a chair and sat down in front of the President and leaned forward, "I think we have to either destroy the Soviets, or kill Jonathan Reacher, or destroy all including our astronauts, the chatter was only heard by CAPCOM since it was a direct communication with the communication officer, but it was heard by all the members of the Apollo Cruiser." he said grimly.

Nixon leaned back on his chair and remained in quiet contemplation.

###

From Mission Commander Thompson's Journal:

On our way back to the Apollo lander, also known as my flying home, I asked if maybe we can visit the main town center of the Chalk because I was curious in meeting everyone else, luckily Tiffany obliged and we headed straight for the market area where the pub was.

Funnily enough we encountered a middle aged man speaking to the man I nearly killed with a broomstick, Tiffany was quick to dismount from the broomstick and embraced Preston while exclaiming, "Preston!"

Preston embraced Tiffany and they were locked in this sweet embrace for a few moments before the middle aged man Preston was talking to turned to me and asked, "Tiffany, who is this man?"

"Ah, dad, this here is a newcomer to the Chalk." said Tiffany.

I nodded, "Good evening, I am James Thompson, and I'm just new around here, and well I ran into Tiffany here, and then the Baron, and I think this place is nice." I said, that was not a lie, I really thought that the Chalk was better than my home in Texas.

"Oh well then, Mister Thompson, you won't mind having a drink at the pub, the first one's on me." said Tiffany's father, whom I eventually got to know as Joe Aching.

"Well, thank you, but I only wanted to meet the people around before going home shortly." I said.

"Well everyone's friendly at the pub, especially to someone brand new." said Joe, "How about you, Preston?"

Preston was speaking to Tiffany, I saw that sheepish look on his face, "No thanks, Mister Aching, I would just want to spend some time with Tiffany."

Tiffany had explained to me rather angrily that she rarely had the chance to meet with Preston because he was busy in being a doctor's apprentice in what could be the biggest area of civilization on this planet, Tiffany mentioned the name it was 'Ankh-Morpork', I guessed that Ankh Morpork was the big patch of lights I saw near a coast line on our descent.

I patted Mister Aching on the shoulder, "Come on, let's leave them alone, I think I'd want to meet the others."

There and then I saw Preston showing a thumbs up as Joe entered the pub, I did the same thing to my sister when our dad was threatening to ruin a romantic moment between my sister and her boyfriend, I simply distracted the old man and I remembered seeing my sister showing a thumbs up.

As I was about to enter the pub, I noticed a large and burly looking man looking quite spiteful at Tiffany, it was at this moment that I started reaching for my gun, but then I told myself "Oh man, what the hell were you planning to do?"

But somehow training and experience in life had told me that the type of look that man just shot at Tiffany was something negative, like that of a murderer planning to kill the victim, and that large and burly man just entered the pub.

I entered the pub behind this grouch and I found Joe Aching at a table with the other local workers, by the looks of it, with a pint, while the grouch got his drink and sat at the quiet corner of the pub.

Joe invited my at the table and began introducing me to his buddies, mostly the movers and shakers of this town, as he passed me the drink, I introduced myself with the same story, causing one of them to exclaim "Oh so it was your house that fell from the sky, I saw that!"

I simply chuckled and said "Well, that's my job, I like these things, inventing and all."

I took a good sip of the beer, it was really good to be honest, better than any beer on Earth! Eventually I had to ask the question, "Who is the grouch guy?" I whispered.

No one wanted to talk, in fact everyone had began eyeing their drinks and did not pay attention to me all of a sudden, that is until one of them spoke up, "That guy is…not welcome around here, I mean I thought you bought his house and he moved out…but…he's still here." the man sighed.

Joe spoke, "Look, Mister Thompson, you should not talk to that guy, he beat up his teen pregnant daughter into a miscarriage two or three years ago, got the whole town riled up."

I looked down into my drink and shook my head, "And he's still here?" Oh hell from where I came from he'd be thrown in jail for life, but then I heard that if he was to be in the Soviet Union, he'd be shoved into a gulag, either way the man is free, why?

"But Tiffany really gave him a hard lesson with her magic." said Joe proudly.

"Who is that guy?" I prompted.

"Seth Petty." said one of Joe's buddies in the same breath as someone saying 'Adolf Hitler'.

You know, I ran into a small village problem like this before in Korea, particularly when I was on leave and I found out about the village thug beating up one of the waitresses and the boss couldn't do anything about it, so I simply took my pistol and confronted the violent man, he left with his ego shattered after I humiliated him, I should have shot him.

I simply nodded and sipped my drink, that's when that clunky walkie talkie, which I was able to slip into my pocket, began to chirp, "Whoa, excuse me, I think I need to use the bathroom." I said quickly.

"Bathroom's out the back." Joe pointed with his thumb.

"Ah yes, thank you." I said.

I ran out the back and pulled out the walkie talkie from my pocket and heard it chirp, "This is Apollo Cruiser, Mission Commander, we have a huge problem right here!" the voice exclaimed, it sounded like Desmond, the current officer in charge of the Apollo Cruiser.

"What is the issue, did the Orbiter blew up?" I asked.

"No, there is another interplanetary spaceship approaching us, oh my God, James, I think…the ruskies are here." said Desmond.

I knew that we have this transparency policy between us all in this mission, so I know that the Orbiter and Lander modules were listening, and so as Mission Control. "All modules, all crew, listen up, I think you've just heard the news that the Russians are here, has anyone mentioned this to Houston?"

No one answered, "I do believe that Houston is listening in, they would know by now." said Desmond.

Another voice chimed in, "This is Houston - Flight, come again on the supposed Soviet presence?"

###

From K.G.B Interrogation File #05069: [REDACTED]/ K.G.B Case File #04932:

On April 20, 1973, the N-1 rocket carrying the TMK interplanetary module launched from Baikonaur Cosmodrome, thirty minutes after that the first of five tankers derived from the N-1 launched into orbit to rendezvous with the TMK module Mockba in order to refuel the module.

Within the four days, four Soyuz rockets were launched, carrying four landers derived from the Soyuz capsule, and lastly the crew were brought up in the last two Soyuz launches.

On April 24, 1973, the TMK Mockba (Moscow) executed its Trans-planetary injection burn towards the Discworld.

It should be noted that the TMK Mockba was superior to the Americans' Apollo Cruiser, for the Mockba was 10 meters in diameter and about 28 meters in length, had an experimental petal centrifuge in order to provide gravity for our cosmonauts, and was powered by an experimental nuclear rocket engine.

This mission was nothing more than a shakedown cruise for the Mockba, for it could be refueled and sent to Venus, Mars, or even Jupiter and Saturn, all while being able to sustain its crew of 15.

However a traitor to the motherland has sabotaged this mission, and the KGB shall submit her own accounts, as well as those of others, to the Central Committee;

"I am Elena Valentina Sablin, and just like you actual traitors to the Bolshevik cause, I am a member of the K.G.B, but unlike you imbeciles that arrest me now and threaten me with death, you're all spineless lizards serving a Tsar hidden in the Communist Party of Lenin!

Yes, I shot the captain as we executed our orbital insertion burn, for I was the political officer aboard that spacecraft and I know the true spirit of the October revolution, it is in my blood and some would say in my hair.

There was three crew compartments which forms the spinning 'petals' of the Mockba, and the main laboratory module at the front which had the telescopes and the main control of the ship.

As I was the designated first officer of the Mockba, I was with the captain alone in the bridge or the command module, it was ten O'clock Moscow time, which our clocks were synced to, when I simply pulled out my gun and shot him, all it took was one shot.

I pushed the floating body at the airlock and ejected him into space, of course the crew heard the shot, but who were they to side on? Gentlemen, I picked the crew myself and I knew of who they sided with, all of them sided with me.

Why did I shoot the captain and why did they side with me? Go look at the poor men and women, the poor workers, outside of Moscow and you tell me who are the victims here! I shall not tell you of my reason for doing this because you yourself had known the big mistakes of those in charge, eating caviar in their limousines while poor farmers die out there like flies!

My grandfather fought in the great October Revolution, my father fought the Nazis as a tank commander and died fighting the Great Patriotic War, I was from the poor proletariat in the East, and the main government did not care about what happened to us, where was all that Lenin fought for?

The crew I've chosen all suffered from the same problems, they were proletariat with nothing to eat for most days but now that they've become cosmonauts, we know how filthy rich and greedy Moscow is!

I assigned a young man, Sergei Ivanilov, as Mockba first officer, we were to still do our mission of scientific and peaceful exploration, even if the Mockba had carried twenty five nuclear warheads and guns."

It was at this point that the traitor had refused to answer any of our questions and, painfully and humiliatingly, we had to resort to the more honest - backed with evidence - side of the story of the Americans, who if only they were not raised in the capitalist world would have earned the Hero of the Soviet Union medal and title.

###

The ill-fated Mission Commander of the Mockba floated while screaming at the searing pain that he felt of getting shot at with a pistol on the head, but then that screaming of agony had turned into terror as he saw his own body in the spacesuit with frozen blood floating around him.

His screams even became more terrified as he saw a white horse - in space - trotting up to him while carrying an individual in black robes and - the main cause which caused the Mission commander to start screaming in a high pitch voice - was skeletal thin.

'YOU'RE NOT FROM OUR WORLD' said Death.

"I..-…I was shot by my own first officer!" exclaimed the Mission Commander after he was able to recompose himself.

Death looked at the spaceship heading towards the Disc 'LIKE WITH THE LAST GUY I PICKED UP'

"Oh really, how was he?"

'AS SCARED AS YOU, THOUGH HE CANNOT REMEMBER WHO HE WAS.'

"Poor bastard."

'SERVING IN THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION DOES WEIRD THINGS TO YOUR MEMORY.' Death then shook his head, 'WHAT AFTERLIFE DO YOU BELIEVE IN?'

The Mission Commander froze, as a loyal officer to the Communist Party, he was an atheist, "I am a communist and I do not believe in such things."

'OH, YOU ARE THOSE TYPES THEN' said Death, sighing, with a swing of his scythe, he freed the soul of the Mission Commander from his body.

"Where will you take me?"

'DO YOU BELIEVE IN ANY FATE? MAYBE REINCARNATION?'

"Oh yes, I mean that's what my mother told me, I once wanted to reincarnate into something that could get to America, I wanted to know how the place truly was, or maybe the Kremlin, I always wanted to have an office there."

Even up to this day, no one knew that whenever the presidential pen of either President Nixon or Soviet Leader Brezhnev went missing, it was most likely to be on the desk of the other leader, and no one knew that the certain special pen - a black with bits of gold colored metal - was alive and could hear, see, think, but not talk even though it had no eyes nor technically a physical brain.

Mission Commander…er…special pen number 045 (U.S designation) or special pen number 40 (Soviet designation) would go on to be used to sign plenty of special landmark deals.

###

From the journal of Apollo Cruiser Commander Edmund F. Jones:

Even up to today I do not know why I was the designated commander of the Apollo Cruiser while Captain, by that I mean Mission Commander Thompson, was gone, I was relatively young and inexperienced, but then again I had the knowledge of keeping the Cruiser running and I was trained for it and I did well, but I had not expected to be in contact with the Soviets, of all people.

The Soviets were said to be evil or at least unsympathetic to the free world, that they would rather see us burn than live in peace, even though we did not do anything to them.

We noticed that something was wrong when the readouts on our computers, mainly those hooked up to the specialized cameras we were pointing at the space adjacent to the Discworld, showed that there was something colored green and red.

The cameras broke down the environment into colors and their luminosity, there should only be the grayness of the moon, the blue and green of the Disc, and maybe the silvery-gray of our own Apollo Orbiter on the readouts, but then there it was, something big, green and red, and was heading towards the Disc.

Since I came from the Navy, I ended up shouting 'General Quarters!' into the local comm of the Apollo Cruiser before correcting it to "Guys, we have something of a big problem here."

Jerry, Danny, and Desmond, who were in the Apollo Shuttle, floated to the main habitation module to see what was going on, I simply pointed to them the screen and they wondered why there was green and red, or rather now I would say Soyuz green and communist red.

We were silent, waiting for it to appear on our window as a speck or something, we needed to know what it was, our first clear view of this mysterious and possible artificial object was on our high zoom cameras, it was not any artificial object like Sputnik or Pioneer, you know those small satellites, this one was a full blown spaceship.

Now, I'm not embarrassed to say that we sort of suffered from a size problem complex upon seeing the size of that thing, hell I thought it was an alien ship, or maybe even the USS Enterprise, but if it were to be built by the Russians.

It looked Russian, it looked like a big Soyuz craft, like 10 meters wide and how many meters long, it was bigger than us, especially with those three slowly spinning petals, like those toys you'd spin fast and would fly like a helicopter, plus it had a engine on a telescoping tube or mount extending the engine away from the craft.

What scared us the most would be that our cameras had picked up a floating spacesuit with frozen blood crystals sort of floating around it, we were terrified, we thought that a poor crewman was shot for a minor mistake.

I remembered how Desmond shook his head and said "Boy, Washington has a lot of explaining to do, how had we not known about this?"

Jerry was an expert in geospatial sciences and he just had to answer, "We cannot know when precisely a rocket would lift off if we do not know the schedule, we can only be lucky by having a spy plane or a spy satellite over the Russian launchpad while they prepare the rocket."

"Or we simply did not care and thought that they were behind us." I interjected and everyone nodded their heads in agreement, we thought that the Russians were famous for losing their cosmonauts, in fact we ourselves thought that the news of the LOK 3 reaching the moon was a joke.

But the Russians had built something that looked bigger than our spacecraft, things just don't make sense, "I think next time NASA should just build a bigger Apollo command service module, like ten meters wide and thirty meters long or something." I joked.

I radioed in Mission Control and our Mission Commander to report about our sightings, Thompson could not believe what we were reporting, however Mission Control had by now received the transmissions of our cameras and I'm pretty sure that they too would be shaking their heads in disbelief.

But what was more intriguing would be the fact that we started receiving SSTV transmissions, as in camera transmissions from the Soviet spacecraft, I had our communications specialist, Danny, to tune our receivers to pick up the transmission.

We had this small screen on one of our computers and the first thing we saw on that screen, after all the fuzziness disappeared, was a face of a woman who was as young as us who were aboard the Apollo Cruiser, we're mostly aged between 25 to 28, and I had a guess that she's 23 to 25.

She was beautiful I tell you, she didn't have her helmet on when she spoke to us via video broadcast and we could see her natural red hair and her smooth face, and by the looks of it she was somewhat thin.

She began speaking in Russian, causing me to turn to the other three and say "Does anyone here speak Russian? Don't worry, I won't report ya to the government when we get back home."

Apparently the woman could hear us, she laughed and said in English, "Oh you fools, I could speak English, I was just teasing you bunch." she giggled, trust me when I say that she sounded more like a mischievous teenager than a serious cosmonaut.

I mean here we are just floating still, wondering how we are to respond to this Russian, "Who are you?" I asked.

"I am Elena Valentina Sablin and I do hope that we can meet face to face, I have a proposition that you Americans could not refuse." said Elena.

"What would this proposition be then?" I asked.

Elena giggled, "I told you, I want to meet you face to face first, however as a token to show how serious how I am, I would like to tell you that I had just shot our captain and we have mutinied, he's now floating dead in space."

So that's the body floating near the ship, oh great the Russians are mutinying against Moscow, when I thought that this day would be exciting and crazy, I was thinking about the Discworld and not about getting stuck in a spy film!

Desmond decided to ask "Why did you launch a mutiny?"

Elena, now that I thought of her, was a firebrand communist, but someone who was balanced by this thirst for Justice and equality, that includes speaking with the enemy and treating him or her humanly, "Do you ever see what goes on in Moscow? Our supposed representatives to the Supreme Soviet of workers are rich with oil money. My father died a hero, my mother died at the hands of the K.G.B for speaking out against Stalin, and I was an orphaned because of them."

"So you decided to drag your problems here to space?" said Jerry, crossing his arms, shaking his head slightly.

Elena sighed, "Mutiny was the only way to get them to listen, to change, either they would change by their own will or I would do it by force."

There was suddenly this sense of dread that floated above us four, we ended up glancing at one another, "What do you mean by force?" I asked.

She smiled this devilish and mischievous smile which has been seared into our heads, she then said "Our ship is armed with guns and nuclear warheads, they're small warheads and guns but they can destroy any major city, and most certainly destroy any spacecraft."

So the Soviets were indeed going against the Outer Space Treaty, but who says that our own country was holy? "Look, um…what is it that you want? Are you holding us hostage?" I asked directly.

Elena shook her head, "No, I'm not blaming you Americans for my problems, I'm blaming the pigs in the Kremlin!"

"So we're like friends?" Desmond nervously asked.

Elena grinned, she was like a harsh mistress to be honest, "Acquaintance, you have my assurances that I will not shoot you."

We breathed a sigh of relief, but it was an uneasy one, we do not, certainly do NOT, trust this redhead, just this specific redhead. I did not want this to be a political issue, I switched tuned the transmitters and receivers back to Mission Control.

"Houston, we have a problem, a political one…we'll replay the discussion that happened with the Soviet spacecraft, we need a little help here, preferably from Washington D.C." I said.


	9. Part 08 - Apollo Solar

From the journal of Mission commander James Thompson:

Now, if anyone from NASA is reading this now, I beg of you not to harbor any plans to shoot me with a sniper rifle, or a fighter jet if you're really that pissed off, but I decided to go back to the pub and sit down once more with Joe Aching, I must have been slightly drunk or something but not too drunk.

"So, this-…I mean your daughter, she's a witch?" I said, though I already knew that she was a witch but I still did not buy it, like is she one of those helpful ones or evil ones?

Joe gulped down his drink and had this air of confidence, "That's my Tiff alright, did you know she saved the Baron's son when she was nine? We did not believe it at first, we thought that it was the other way around! Of course that Roland whom Tiffany had saved is now the Baron." said the proud old man of Tiffany.

"Hey, how about the story that your daughter killed that hiver or something." prompted one of our drinking buddies.

"I don't know much about that, I think we'll allow Tiffany to explain herself to our friend here." said Joe, and by 'friend' he was referring to me.

"But I heard a LOT about her kissing the lord of winter!" exclaimed the man in front of me with vigor that made it sound as if it's an unbelievable and audcaious thing to do like 'I shot John F. Kennedy' or something.

Joe smiled, "Ah yes that," he then gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder, "did you know that my Tiff had actually spurned the Wintersmith, that mythological being, that god? That's how good and pretty she is, she was thirteen I think."

Tiffany's father suddenly frowned, "But you know, it's not all pretty, not with the Cunning Man incident when she was sixteen."

"The Cunning Man?" I asked, sounds like a Nixon campaign poster 'VOTE FOR RICHARD 'THE CUNNING MAN' NIXON!'

"Yeah, so much for an evil spirit that hunts the most powerful of the witches, he targeted my daughter and she won." Joe was starting to cry at that point, "Thank the gods she lived."

Boy, when I was nine I got detention at grade school, when I was thirteen I got my ass handed to me by bullies, though when I was sixteen I scared the crap out of the U.S. Air Force by taking my father's trainer plane from the war and flying it up near the air force base.

"What if she hadn't?" I wondered.

"The witches would be gone, the villages around here for hundreds of miles would be in…hell." the woodcutter - well he had an axe underneath the table - said, "I mean my friend up in Lancre was bandaged by the Granny Weatherwax shortly before her death, should Granny have died earlier..."

"And not to mention that Tiffany stopped the elves, imagine if she died and all the witches died…" the clerk - I guess, based on his glasses - sighed and shook his head, "It would be like the old days when the elves just ran amok, killing people and making our lives a misery."

"When did this Cunning Man thing happened?" I asked.

"Like two years ago." said Joe.

Two years ago, that C.I.A spook must have seen those dark days, this place is crazy but fun to be honest, "Well," I then raised my glass, "to Tiffany then, I guess."

We clinked glasses and gulped down our last pints for the night, at least for me, I'm not sure if they would order another round, but I decided to excuse myself and I went outside, that's when I encountered the C.I.A spook, "Ah, Mister Reacher."

Jonathan nodded in acknowledgement, "I knew you'd be here trying to know the locals, it's the same thing I did, it was a horrid night."

"Yeah, you came here during the Cunning Man incident right?" I asked.

The C.I.A agent snapped, "Now how the hell did you know about Operation Cunning Man?" but that's when he realized I was referring to the local Cunning Man and not whatever the hell Langley had in mind.

"Operation Cunning Man?" I nearly laughed.

Jonathan slapped his forehead hard, "You were referring to the Cunning Man here? Oh yes, I was a bystander with a standard issue firearm, it was chaotic here in the Chalk, the whole village wanted to kill Seth Petty."

"Okay, what's Operation Cunning Man then?" I asked.

Jonathan was reluctant at first but then he decided to say "We installed a dictator in the Philippines, go figure, we killed the past few presidents of that country via an airplane accident." he shrugged, as if to say 'to hell with secrecy!'

"What?" I was slightly shocked.

"Yeah, I mean we were just a few years into the execution of the mission when I disappeared…how's the country now?" he asked.

The last news I heard of the Philippines was a thing or two about bombings and Martial Law, "They're under Martial Law by now."

"Same guy in charge?"

"Yeah."

Jonathan smiled slightly, "Well the Cunning Man was supposed to be an operation to see if we could do the same to the Latin America countries who are fighting communism."

I shook my head, "Okay, forget that, but how the hell did you survive here?"

"I did my job as intelligence officer with some very powerful people around here." said Jonathan with some pride.

I smiled, "Okay, something tells me that you're going to tell me that you at least tried to shoot the Cunning Man."

Jonathan looked annoyed, "It was worth a try!"

"Did it work?" I asked just to tease him.

Jonathan shook his head, "Tiffany killed the Cunning Man with fire, but I wanted to try shooting that thing!"

"So it didn't work?" I said.

"No, the bullet went through him and ricocheted, striking my gun and causing a whole lot of pain in my hand." said Jonathan, the regret on his face would have been enough to provide me entertainment for the six months we spent heading here.

I patted him on the back, "Well you know what we say down in Texas, you do not shoot at a brick wall."

Jonathan sighed, "Well, it was nice meeting you, Mister Thompson."

"Wait, before you go, I think you'd want to know that the Russians are…uh…above us." I said.

The look on his face became that of anger and…well what does a person look like when he or she has realized that their worst enemy has caught up with them, "What?" he hissed.

"Yeah, the Soviets are in orbit right now as we speak." I said.

"Are we going to do anything about it?" he asked.

"And start World War III back on Earth, are you mad!?" I exclaimed.

"I'm pretty sure that those Russians have poisoned our water lines or something." said Jonathan.

I laughed, "Hey, that's a good one, I understood that reference." this guy must have watched Dr. Strangelove a dozen times or something, "Say, how crazily prepared are you for the worst?" I decided to ask out of the blue, he seems to be one of those that get paranoid too easily.

"I had a two hundred page plan on what if Tiffany was killed by the Cunning Man." he crossed his arms.

"Had?" I raised an eyebrow.

"I…sort of used it as toilet paper when Tiffany survived and the Cunning Man was banished, but I at least tried to consider the fact that the United States or the Soviets would have mounted a space mission during the time of crisis." said Jonathan.

"Let me guess, it somehow had a B-52 conducting a strike on the Chalk?" I asked out of sarcasm.

"Ye…y…sort of-…" he laid his chin on a clenched fist, "You know, that was the worst idea I've had."

I decided to excuse myself already, this man may go cuckoo at any moment, "Okay then, I'm gonna get some sleep and I hope you do too."

We shook hands, "You too, Mister Thompson, you too."

###

From the interview with Ares P. Bacon;

So, we conducted our Lunar EVA for about three to five hours, time gets kinda fuzzy when you're in space, we collected rock samples and frozen liquid samples from the moon, I remembered how Bob had taken the whole EVA with glee, he was excitedly grabbing moon rocks left and right, getting on his knee - it's hard to bend on a spacesuit - just to have a close look of the rocks.

We even tried to approach one of those dragons or wyverns as some would call them, those gray gentle beasts with long talons and…uh…they sort of breath fire but they shoot it out of their butts in order to produce thrust to fly in the air in the low gravity of the moon.

Their 'natural rocket engines' proved to be problematic to try to approach them, they would just blast off as soon as they sensed that we were approaching them, and if we tried to get the jump on one, we'd most likely get burned, we don't know how hot those things burned but I knew that our spacesuits aren't flamethrower proof.

Bob and I went back into the Lander after we've collected our samples and said goodbye to the moon and the nearest dragon who was sleeping and didn't really see us waving at it.

When we came back, John, our lander pilot, looked deeply worried and scared, I asked him, "John what happened?"

John wiped the sweat off his brow, "Have you switched off your earpieces? The Soviets are orbiting the Discworld, they caught up with us!"

I frowned, "But how?" I asked.

Bob did not care, "That was sort of to be expected from a country that was able to land a man on the moon."

I shook my head, "Look, gentlemen, we have another objective to do as of this moment, we're going to be headed towards the sun of the Discworld."

John nodded, "Right, sorry sir, I was just…how the hell did those Russians do it?"

"Well, how did those Russians fought the Germans? The thing about Russians, John, is that they find the most practical way to solve problems, it may not look pretty, but it solved things." I said as I strapped myself in while Bob meticulously stored the samples in the samples storage boxes.

John was getting quite impatient with Bob's gentleness, causing him to say, "Hey, ground crew, are the baggage loaders done?"

Bob went "Alright, alright, I'm on my last sample!" as he placed carefully the sample of dragon spittle we found on the rocks. Once the boxes were secured and Bob was strapped in, I radioed Mission Control.

"This is Apollo Lander, Houston, are we go for solar mission?" I radioed.

The response came after half a minute, "This is Houston - Flight, I think you may know that the Soviets are now near us, be careful now, you do not have sensors or scanners to track a fast projectile heading your way."

"So are we go or no-go, Flight?" I asked.

After a minute or two of silence, only then the reply came, "This is Houston-Flight, I've been speaking to the other flight controllers here and our consensus, based on the data on our screens, is that you are a go for flight, but be as quick as you can."

"Noted, thanks Flight." I said, I then turned to John, "John, may you do the honors?"

According to our mission briefings before, we were supposed to decouple or jettison the Apollo CSM from the big lander however since the weird nature of this place meant that we were not consuming fuel even though our engines burned meant that we did not have to leave behind anything on the moon.

As soon as we were off the moon, as soon as we saw the Disc in all its splendor, as soon as the sun showed up, Bob's mouth went off like a motorboat, "Look at the size of that thing, it's slightly bigger than the moon but not that much and yet it provides just enough heat to make life sustainable down there!"

"Bob?"

"Yes, John."

"Shut up."

Bob began grumbling to himself which we sorta heard through our earpieces but barely, mainly because Mission Control barged in, "This is Houston-Flight, you three better start behaving, I mean it."

"Sorry Flight." said John.

The flight to the star's sphere of influence did not take that long, in fact we were only coasting for about fifteen minutes before Mission Control chimed in, "This is Houston - Flight, your computers are indicating that you're now within the sphere of influence of the small sun."

"Copy that, Flight." said John.

The sun was not that bright when you orbit near it, in fact it is something that human science is still unable to explain up to today, how could a sun be that small - maybe the size of…Texas or something smaller - and produce so much heat and light for those below us, but somehow from up here it was not as bright as you'd think it was.

It was like looking at a gentle night light, it's quite odd if you think of it, and I sure do hope that Bob would stop over thinking it. "Okay, it seems that this 'star' has the characteristics of a red dwarf from up here," said Bob, he then looked downward and said, "but it's a G-class star down there, like much our own sun, and this is all according to our sensors."

"Look, Bob, why can't you just take the fact in for a moment that we're witnessing a spectacle of science, I mean something which we cannot explain?" said John.

"I am trying to find a way to explain it." retorted Bob, going through the readouts of the computers, "Look, this sun has not that much gravitational pull and yet it could push those hydrogen atoms close enough to fuse! And it even has sun spots and solar flares!"

We expected for this whole trip to be easy, quick, and that the only painful thing we'll be receiving would be Bob incessant whining about what humans are not meant to know, but then suddenly -…well, you would not believe what you would have heard unless you actually listen to it.

"Apollo Orbiter, this is Houston - Flight, we have a problem." said the Flight Director, a exact opposite of what happened during Apollo 13.

"What's the problem, Flight?" I asked.

"Our calculations predict that you're about to hit Apogee in a few moments, a bit too early for a safe orbital return." said the Flight Director.

"What do you mean by that, Flight?" asked John.

"I mean that our calculations show that if you do a prograde burn you'll get gravitational assist to be hurled out into deep space, if you do a retrograde you might get slammed into the surface of the star, you're heading towards the surface of the Discworld once you've made it past the star." said the Flight Director.

"But what if we were to do a horizontal burn as soon as we have cleared the star?" asked John.

"Based on the weight of your spacecraft and the thrust of your engines, you'll end up hitting the edge of the Discworld, we're advising you to land the lander on the Disc instead and take off once more." said the Flight Director.

"Now that's just ridiculous, that means we'd have to decouple the Apollo CSM from the actual lander itself!" said John, "We would burn up in a ball of fiery death if were to try to land with the lander, it has no heatshields!"

"This is Houston-Flight, we'd taken that into consideration and if only you'd allow me to finish, you are to decouple your lander and use your CSM to do a propulsive landing, do not worry, it has landing gears, the CSM is a smaller version of the Apollo Lander." said the Flight Director.

John sighed, "Alright, but we were not supposed to do a propulsive landing with this steep angle of attack."

"That's based on the fact that your engines are to be guzzling fuel, however since your engines have suddenly become hyper efficient then it would be safe to do a propulsive landing." said the Flight Director.

We would be losing communications with them as soon as we hit the surface of the atmosphere, "This is the Orbiter Commander to Houston - Flight, wish us luck."

"This is Houston - Flight, good luck to you three, we'll try to do everything we can."

I turned to John and said to him, "Our lives are in your hands now, go get us a good and safe landing spot."

As we went around the sun, we found ourselves heading away from it quickly while facing it, so it's like setting your car in reverse and not turning your head back nor looking at the rear view mirrors.

Mission Control chirped, "This is Houston-Flight, you are go for staging, in a few seconds you would be hitting the atmosphere and all communications would be cut off."

John pushed the button that triggered the explosive bolts to decouple the Apollo CSM from the main lander module, we felt the force of the retro engines pushing us forward, away from the lander.

In a few moments we felt the atmosphere, you can tell by the shaking of your whole capsule, the trouble is that we do not know exactly how long until we do the propulsive landing, our cameras might have been out of action, or our computers must have been malfunctioning.

John, oh man that guy was the greatest pilot I've ever seen, he was able to land the damn thing just by looking at the dials and the little amount of data we had, we were terrified as we hurtled through the air but our pilot kept his cool.

But I still blame him for kicking our butts hard when he began the propulsive burn, it really was like getting kicked by a horse or a mule, or both, I think we were hitting 3 or 4 gs of acceleration.

I think I must have passed out, I mean I wasn't much of a fighter jock like John, I forgot to do the breathing technique they'd be teaching our fighter pilots in the Air Force.

The last thing I remembered before the second and much longer blackout would be a big mass of buildings and people showing up on the small screen on our console, the camera was pointed downwards and was our rear view mirror, I then passed out momentarily again.

I woke up when we were somewhere on the ground.

"John, where are we?" I asked.

I saw John looking out the hatch window which was on top of us and said, "I think we're surrounded by…men in red wearing pointy hats… and I think there's some soldiers outside."

Damn, that was the only thing that went through my mind.

Someone knocked on the hatch saying, "This is Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson of the Watch, you are under arrest for trespassing into Unseen University grounds, and-… No Detritus, don't shoot yet!…Ah good, that's better. Now where was I? Oh yes, do come out with your hands up, you have the right to remain silent…"

Oh boy, I just did what they told us to do, we could have just been jerks and hightailed it with our engines but we might end up jeopardizing the connections being made by our Mission Commander.

I opened the hatch and got out of the capsule with my hands up, a large and muscular orange haired man met us, "I am Captain Carrot of the Watch, you're under-"

"Yes, Captain, I know, I am Ares P. Bacon, and I surrender…but please don't touch the craft." I pleaded.

Thankfully this Captain Carrot was a nice kind of person, the type who has a lot of charisma, "Your valuables will be secured, though it would be considered as evidence."

"But just don't let anyone touch it!" I said.

Well it went in the way that you'd think it would, I told the other two to come out with their hands up and they did, we left our helmets and suits in the capsule - we were wearing civilian clothing underneath - and then they slapped on the handcuffs and we were marched off to the local jail.

We could not have escaped, not with the big lumbering thing that was Detritus, his sidearm was basically a siege weapon, and he was pointing it at us in a somewhat lame attempt to intimidate us, lame that he can't speak all that well but effective because of the siege weapon pointed at our faces!

###

Never in the history of the White House had things gotten very dramatic, Nixon had spent thirty minutes in silence, contemplating the situation, when suddenly - and coincidentally at the same time - two phones rang.

One phone was the Washington-Moscow hotline between the two superpowers, and the other was a direct line to Mission Control at Houston, and Nixon did not know which one to pick up first.

He went for the red one, "Hello, this is President Nixon of the United States" was the opening statement of what would be known as the most historic phone call in history without considering the Apollo 11 'Nixon Phones the Moon'.

"This is the General Secretary Brezhnev of the Soviet Union." though none of the aides have heard that it was the General Secretary, that is until Nixon had clasped the microphone and exclaimed;

"Gentlemen, the Soviets are on the line!"


	10. Part 09 - Critical Decisions

The hotline between Washington D.C and Moscow was set up for the reason of keeping the peace by allowing the two nuclear superpowers to talk to one another, historians would agree that the phone call between President Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev had avoided plenty of potential problems given the delicate balance of power between the two and how the situation threatened to disturb the said balance.

Both leaders did not know what to say, in fact Nixon was the first one to say something besides salutations and pledge of peace and goodwill, "Mister General Secretary, what is it that you need?"

On the other side of the Atlantic, the leader of the Soviet Union was surrounded by his generals and his aides, all looking at their General Secretary reaching out to their sworn enemy, Brezhnev can speak some English however he would hand it over to a translator once in a while, "Mister President, we really need your help this time."

Nixon smirked, laid his back on the chair and raised his feet on the desk, "Oh really?" he said before clicking on a device attached to the hotline telephone, a voice recorder.

"Mister President, we launched a mission to the Discworld in hopes of peaceful and scientific exploration, however there has been a mutiny, the Mission Commander has been shot by his own first officer." said Brezhnev.

"Well, if your people has control of the ship, can't you do other things to solve the problem?" asked Nixon.

"Mister President, our ship is armed - for the purpose of peaceful or at least justified self defense of course - and we believe that the first officer, Elena Valentina Sablin, has plans to use the ship to launch a violent coup against the rightful authorities of the Soviet Union."

Nixon frowned, "Mister General Secretary, are you saying to me that you have a spaceship has enough weapons to blow up the Soviet Union?"

"We have a spaceship that can blow up our motherland and so as your own United States!"

"What is it that you want us to do then?" asked Nixon.

"Mister President, we have expended all our N-1 rockets, we are requesting for help in destroying this traitor." said Brezhnev.

"What makes you think we'll do that?"

Brezhnev sighed and said "She can end up destroying your country and the other countries!"

Nixon knew he had the Soviets at his hands, "We'll destroy your renegade ship but in only one condition."

"What would that be then?"

Nixon smirked, "I want you to disengage from ever setting foot in space with weapons, or else we'll leak this to the United Nations and we'll see what happens to your country, and also don't you dare go against us ever."

Brezhnev was said to have been nervous at that moment, silence followed for a few moments until, "Will you keep this between us only?"

"As long as you do not go against us, and that means easing restrictions along the Berlin Wall." said Nixon.

Brezhnev faked a cough, "O-…I-..we'll consider-"

"I'm dialing up the General Secretary of the United Nations if that is your answer-"

"Okay, we'll-…we'll ease up restrictions on the Berlin Wall."

Nixon smiled, "And I want you to release the US citizens you detained."

"But will you release our citizens?"

Nixon theatrically looked out the window behind him, "Yeah, of course we will."

"Then yes, we'll release the citizens of your country in a prisoner exchange." said Brezhnev.

"I think it is agreed that we will destroy your own spaceship." said Nixon.

"Thank you, Mister President." said Brezhnev.

Nixon hung the phone with a dramatic and loud 'clang', he then clenched his fist and said "Yes, we have the Soviets right on the money!"

The Director of the C.I.A looked intrigued, "What were you able to do, sir?"

"The Soviets have confirmed that their spacecraft has gone rogue, and now they want us to destroy it!" Nixon said gleefully, "Of course I had them sacrifice a lot of things that goes against the safety and security of NATO."

"But sir, how about the Mister Reacher?" asked the Director.

"Now you listen to me, I will not have any of my astronauts shot up because of your petty little stupid things the CIA had been experimenting on, I want my men back safe and sound, you got that?" Nixon crossed his arms.

"Yes sir, we'll have another way to retrieve Mister Reacher." said the Director, "We'll try using the teleporter technology again, I think we can rebuild a safer and one time use version of it."

"Good." said Nixon, "Now I'll be speaking to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so if you will be so good as to leave?"

###

From the journal of Mission Commander James Thompson:

'BOOSTER - GO, RETRO - GO, FIDO - GO, GUIDANCE - GO, SURGEON - GO, EECOM - GO, GNC -GO, TELMU - GO, CONTROL - GO, PROCEDURES - GO, INCO - GO, FAO - GO, NETWORK - GO, RECOVERY - GO, RECOVERY - GO, CAPCOM - GO. ALL STATIONS READY, PROCEEDING TO TERMINAL COUNT'

You know, dreams can sometimes be very funny once in a while, I went back to the Apollo Lander, after having some drinks with Joe and his buddies, on foot, not wanting to bother the two lovers from having a good date, and after some discussions with my crew, mainly recounting my findings and receiving an update with that damned Soviet spaceship, I went to sleep, we went to sleep.

I heard the Flight Director running through the GO/NO GO Poll, and I found myself inside our lander when it was still in the fairing and part of the habitation module, and the first thing I thought was…well, I mean look at us three, eager to do our jobs as astronauts, sitting there smiling, waiting for the 'ZERO, WE HAVE LIFTOFF OF THE APOLLO INTERPLANETARY ONE' to go through our earpieces.

And now here we are, six months later, on a planet with life and lots of interesting and unique problems, not to mention how they seem to be incompatible with our understanding of the universe, or so based on hearing what my crew mates had to say about the crew of the Apollo Orbiter.

This dream of an exploration full of wonder and awe was suddenly hijacked into this nightmare of some sorts, maybe it was because of how my mind has started connecting the dots with the really scary creatures of this world, mainly those that Tiffany had went up against, and maybe there are some more.

I think I may have seen the Cunning Man, I don't know but a dark creature with a hat and no eyeballs sounds a lot like what a creepy creature would look like, but that's not the scariest part, the scariest part would be -

"Oh-…damn, Mission Commander!" I heard a voice, that of Jeb I think, exclaiming.

I blinked my eyes, wondering if it was a bad dream of if I was awake, "How long have we been asleep?" I slurred as my brain started up.

"Seven hours, more or less." said Bill.

Jeb was looking up - well technically we were sitting with our backs parallel to the ground so when I mean by looking up I meant he was looking at the hatch - and he said, "I think the village is burning."

It took me some time for me to react, a lame "What?" came out instead as I looked to the hatch. I unlatched my belt - I can't remember why I had it on, I guess old habits die hard, we usually latch ourselves onto our seats when sleeping in space - and opened the hatch.

To my disbelief, maybe because of sleepiness, I saw the Chalk in flames, or rather a fire pit was set up in the center of the town, and I swore that they were burning people and that there was this general sense of chaos.

I shook my head, by then I heard Jeb standing behind me, "Captain, what's going on?" he asked.

I turned around and said, "Their burning and executing people in the Chalk."

"Do they always do that?" asked Bill as he unlatched himself from his seat.

"No." I shook my head, "Gentlemen, get the M-16s from the gun cabinet, as well as the water bomb, we're going in."

The gun cabinet had a two man lock system, so that no one man could get the guns and cause havoc, I had one key while Bill had the other, I grabbed for my peacekeeper while the other two went for the M-16 assault rifle, plus I brought our water bomb along.

The water bomb is this nifty little device used to suppress fire, it's in a soft plastic ball that would explode upon contact with fire, it would then extinguish the fire, that is if all things went well.

I think I've already mentioned that we were soldiers, I was a Marine on the ground before going to Marine Corps Aviation and then the Air Force, Bill was a soldier while Jeb went to USAF Weapons School before going to NASA.

We were like cowboys or sheriffs - take your pick, stuck in a (suddenly) lawless land and having the job to keep the peace, though we made sure that the hatch was locked from the outside with this padlock we sort of told NASA to install.

We cocked our guns and made our way to the great fireball in the horizon that was engulfing people as we walked.

"I thought these people are…friendly, I mean based on what you said, Marco Polo." said Jeb.

I shook my head, "Gentlemen, I do not know how or why they suddenly became chaotic." I said firmly, knowing of their innocence.

All of this 'trusting in their innocence' sort of fell apart when I saw these peaceful villagers trying to burn this blonde woman, whom I recognized was the Baron's own wife!

Upon that realization, I ran up to the fire and threw the water bomb - well technically it was dry chemical but the name sort of stuck - and thankfully it worked as advertised.

I then fired three shots into the air, causing the people's rage to turn into fear, but somehow the rage must have been enough to counteract fear to at least balance it; the people did not flee but they sure as hell did not dare approach us.

"What the hell is going on here?" I shouted, "That's the Baron's wife!"

"Yeah, who was a witch!" shouted one of the villagers.

I was confused, "I though you people liked witches?"

There was suddenly a silence, what is it that's up with the locals, I thought they liked witches, or at least tolerated them, "Why, do you support witches?" a man separated from the crowd and confronted me.

I pointed the Colt Peacemaker at him, "You better keep your distance, son, or we'll see what happens!"

The man raised his hands and backed off slowly, good for him, "Now, can anyone tell me what the hell is going on? Where's Tiffany? Where's her family? Where's the Baron?"

Someone suddenly exclaimed, "He knows the Achings? I think we should get him!"

At that moment all hell was about to break loose, my crew flanked me and pointed their guns, "By your orders, chief, we'll shoot them!" said Jeb.

"Wait, don't shoot them yet!" I exclaimed.

They were close to getting us, however I spotted that the Baroness escaped from her captor. Great, now we were to be the ones at the stake, I was about to give the order to shoot, but thankfully a certain man I ran into showed up.

He held up a paper with the symbol of the Baron, "Stop, I come by the order of the Baron!" it was Jonathan Reacher.

It seems that him calling the name of the Baron had somewhat worked, they backed off and began to disperse, meanwhile I confronted Jonathan, "Mister Reacher, what the hell was that?"

Jonathan looked lost, "I don't know, I just slept and suddenly before I knew it Preston had raised the alarm and said that the Baron's wife has been caught."

"Preston? Oh so he lives at the castle?" I asked.

"He was actually a guard at the castle two years ago, but when I asked him today why he's wearing the guard uniform, he said that he didn't see the point of becoming a doctor now that Tiffany has died." said Jonathan.

"Tiffany is dead?!" I exclaimed.

Jonathan looked lost, "I don't know either, but whenever I spoke about Tiffany…they would mention that she's the cause of the death of the witches or something, and something about her being the Cunning Man's puppet…or host."

My heart sank, "But I thought she defeated this creature?"

Jonathan had this hunch, I saw the look on his face and it simply said 'HUNCH' all over it, "I think the C.I.A did something very stupid with their teleporting machine, again!"

"But what the hell do we do now? Call Houston?" I said.

"N-…yeah, call Houston!" said Jonathan.

"Why, what's your hunch?" asked Jeb.

"You see, this universe is a fabric…I mean space and time are pretty much together, right? Well there are holes in this fabric of space AND time which would allow us to send things through, these things are called wormholes, however our teleportation machine punches holes through the fabric of space and time to create its own wormholes, got it?" explained Jonathan.

"It's either we were transported to another parallel universe or the parallel universe was transported to us." I said, exactly like that episode of Star Trek.

"Exactly!" cried out Jonathan.

"What do we do now?" asked Bill.

"I think we should head over to the Baron's castle." said Jonathan.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I saw the Aching family hiding there in terror, they said that their farm was burned down…and their…Tiffany…is gone, missing or dead, and I heard that Wentworth went looking for his sister." said Jonathan before adding, "Wentworth is Tiffany's younger brother."

I looked back at the silhouette of the Lander against the gently-rising sun, and then at the castle which was still in the darkness, "Oh hell, let's go." I said.

On our way to the castle, I pulled out a mobile tape recorder and began giving the higher ups a piece of my mind, particularly with what's suddenly going on around here, but my message was incomplete somehow, I had to find out some other things from the locals, or rather the locals of this new world which only less than 24 hours ago I was enjoying.

When we reached the castle, I noticed Preston who was teary eyed and in mourning while standing guard outside, "Preston? Where's Tiffany?" I asked.

Preston looked up to me and said, "She's gone sir, she's been gone for two years now, I heard that-…" he then sniffed and suddenly became inconsolable.

Jonathan patted me on the shoulder, "Come on, there's no use, we're the only people here who are out of time, rather out of their time."

I was dragged away from Preston by Jeb who brought me inside the castle, that's where we encountered a gloomy looking Joe Aching sitting around a small table with the Baron and the Baroness, both of whom looked shaken.

We approached the table, they seemed to recognize us, rather this distant sense of recognition, "Do you remember who I am?" I asked.

The Baron looked at me and said, "I think so, you must be the new one around here…but wait, no, Tiffany was gone..but…well I think she must have introduced you to me before she…was taken."

"By who?" I pounded the table.

Joe stood up, "By the Cunning Man! And why are you so concerned about her? Are you a witch hunter?"

"Tiffany was my friend, you people were my friends." I said, "And if anything had happened to my friends then oh hell I will help them."

I saw the eyes of the Baroness glimmer with hope for a few moments, but it disappeared, "How do you know? How can you help?"

"I know where Tiffany is." I lied.

The three suddenly looked at me, "You're kidding!" exclaimed Joe Aching.

"No, we know where Tiffany is, trust me, we have a whole vast array of knowledge." I said boastfully, trying to get their spirits up to fight.

"My library does not have everything." said the Baroness, I was not expecting that.

"It may not have everything, but we can piece together the information, trust me, we can get this sucker!" I said.

If you're wondering why I was acting concerned and trying to get their hopes up, well I was stuck in the same situation with a bunch of neophyte fighter pilots in Korea, the Chinese were unleashing hell to our troops in the North, we were being pushed back to the South, I gave them the same uplifting impression that they're squadron commander was the leader to follow.

My charm barely worked on them, but it did start something, "If you're so sure that you can find Tiffany, whoever you are, please help us." said the Baron as he clasped his hands.

I reached for the walkie talkie in my pocket, "All Apollo Mission units, report in now."

"Mission Commander, this is Apollo Cruiser reporting, the Soviet ship has done nothing yet…but our scanner picked up some hell of an energy spike, it's as if there had been an energy blast or something that engulfed the entire Discworld."

Not good, but the next report was even worse, "Mission Commander, this is Apollo Orbiter…well…technically Lander but that's your designation, the crew are in prison at a city called Ankh Morpork, we are facing charges of trespassing after we landed our ship at some wizard university."

"Apollo Orbiter, why haven't you escaped prison yet?" I asked.

"Well…uh…yikes, the prison is MUCH safer than the streets right now with Martial Law in full effect." said Ares, "A crowd has in fact surrounded, or so I heard, a joke and novelty shop called Boffo, there's accusations of witches flying all over the place."

Jonathan suddenly asked the Baron, "Sir, where are the Feegles?"

"The Feegles? We can't get any help from them, not with what…I ordered…before." said the Baron.

"The Feegles?" I asked.

"Imagine six inch high tough scotsmen, they only drink and fight, and they're really good at it." said Jonathan, "You must have met one, or one must have seen you, they're good at hiding and rumors say that Tiffany has at least one Feegle following her all the time, except for the bathroom of course."

"Then what did he do?" asked Bill.

"He ordered for the Feegle mound to be dug up." said Jonathan, "It was a blood bath! Now, the Feegles would not want to help humans anymore, not unless they can get their 'Big Wee Hag' back."

"How do you know all this if you're from the good timeline?" I asked.

"Because as the Baron's assistant I heard all of the near bad decisions made, but now that it pushed through…oh boy." said Jonathan, "And now that Tiffany is gone, who's to fight the elves?"

"Elves?" said Bill.

"Yes, they're dangerous and…I heard they torture people for fun." I said.

"Damn." said Jeb.

I noticed that the three locals were so downright depressed that they did not care about what we were talking about, I brought the walkie talkie close to me and clicked it on, "Alright, everyone, listen up, including you Houston."

"This is Houston - Flight, we hear you."

"Including the Russians too." I said.

"This is Apollo Cruiser, we're relaying the message to the Russian ship."

"And the whole world, I'm talking National Television."

"This is Houston - Flight, the mission is being broadcast on CBS and NBC news as we speak, they have live coverage of this place most of the time now that the public is comfortable of the fact that there is another world with life."

###

The President of the United States and the Joint Chiefs of Staff met via telephone twelve hours after the historic phone call with the General Secretary of the Soviet Union,.

"Now, gentlemen, I think you may now have heard through the encrypted communication lines that the Soviets have given us the go order to destroy their spaceship that has gone rogue." Nixon began the phone conference, "And as such I would be needing for the US Air Force to deploy kill-ships to destroy this thing and its renegade crew."

"We understand, Mister President, and as such we will be conducting immediate launches of our Gemini weapons platforms as well as our Big Blue Geminis." said the Chief of the Air Force.

"Make sure that you're able to launch within the next 48 hours to intercept this spacecraft which poses a significant risk to the safety of our world." said Nixon, "Unless if there would be anything else, we shall contact one another for a mission update in exactly 24 hours from now."

As soon as the phone was down, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency entered his office, "Mister President, we have executed our attempt to retrieve Jonathan Reacher by a one use teleportation device based on our prototype…"

"Wow, you people work fast, where is Reacher?" asked Nixon.

The Director adjusted his tie, "Mister President, we have grave news on the matter, our machine went into over drive and blew up after the teleportation attempt, there was no Jonathan Reacher."

"What did it do then?" Nixon glanced at the Director, he had been looking through the papers on his desk.

"We have no idea, sir, but we are sure that nothing bad had happened." said the Director.

The phone rang, when Nixon answered it the voice on the other end said, "Mister President, open your TV now!"

"Who is this? Vice President Jack Muffley?" asked Nixon.

"Yes, Mister President, and you better switch on your TV now!"

Nixon laid the phone on his desk and switched on the TV set that was sitting on the corner of the Oval Office, it was Walter Cronkite on CBS News, "If you have only joined us right now, NASA has declared an emergency with regards to their Apollo Interplanetary mission to the Discworld, there has been a sudden social unrest on the world and our astronauts are stuck in the middle, three had already been arrested by the local authorities…however their Mission Commander has requested for some air time which we would now give to him, he in fact joins us live now in a unique press conference, the like of which has never been seen before. Mister Thompson, go ahead."

The voice of the Mission Commander was broadcast on national television as well as around the world by international outlets such as the BBC World Service, "Now…um…I am Mission Commander James Thompson, and for the days that I've spent around and on the Discworld, in fact I would say less than a day here - it may be different there - I have met some truly unique and friendly people that are as human as you and I are human.

With that said, in less than twenty four hours, in fact after I just went to sleep and woke up next thing in the morning, society has broken down around here for reasons we still do not understand, however we know that it's a temporal - or a time - issue.

This world has its own history, and I learned of its most recent history, mainly how the forces of evil have been repelled by some people here, some very special and talented people.

You may have heard now that magic exists in this world, magic merely becomes their science while our science is considerably magic to them, in other words, there is nothing different between us and these people, my friends, our friends.

But the thing about magic is that while it is fascinating it too is dangerous, as dangerous as how science has given way to the atomic bomb, to the gas chambers, to the inhumane weapons of war used in Vietnam.

Magic, like in our fairytales, can spawn evil villains, very bad and wretched creatures, we are right now have been shoved into a timeline in which the hero of this world has failed and is presumed dead and the evil, the bad guys, have begun to dominate.

We have reason to suspect that we are to be blamed, after all we've uncovered some heinous experimentation with the very fabric of time and space, in the same way that we experimented and toyed with the atom, and other fundamental aspects of our universe.

If you ask us for evidence, we have the result of that heinous experiment, and the reason why I decided to take this issue to the public is because the people has the right to know, this is our mistake and we have to be responsible enough to clean it up.

We are already a bunch of broken down creatures, we have our wars, we've had nothing but wars ever since 1914 with a few breaks in between, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and now when we stepped into another planet, a planet of wonder, of hope, and of general craziness and silliness, we tainted it with our stupidity.

It's as if we should just scrap our space program because we are too immature for space, that we are destined to be killed here on Earth, but it doesn't have to be that way, we can make this right.

We are only a crew of ten, and if you count the Soviets beside us who are also in the same situation, then that's more than twenty humans stuck here, we need the help of those back at home.

No, we will not go back, we know that if we do that, they'll simply be irresponsible and not try to fix what we caused. To quote Winston Churchill, 'this is our finest hour', this is our greatest test of our captaincy when it comes to being the master of our own fates.

We will be waiting for a response."

Nixon muted the TV and glared hard at the Director, "You're not telling me something, are you?"

The Director nodded and played the sorry card, "Mister President, I'm sorry but it was a national secret that went above the level of the President, but yes we have the data to show that…we may be…responsible for the time shift, based on our readouts."

Nixon took a deep breath and said, "You don't show up to work tomorrow." he pointed a finger out the door, "I am going to have you arrested on the grounds of treason and sabotage, you've crossed the line already, you wanted me to shoot down my own astronauts, you wanted me to do a lot of stupid things, well now let's see."

The Secret Service was not far from the President, when they overheard the word 'Arrested' from the side room, they quickly burst into the office with their guns out.

"I'm sorry, Mister Director, but you've pissed me off now." said Nixon, "Take him away!"

###

From the journals of Mission Commander Thompson:

Once I was done with my speech, Jonathan patted my shoulder, "That was a very well done speech, reminds me of the times whenever Kennedy spoke on air."

Jeb shook my hand and said, "You're our Captain alright, and I am not usually those types to cry, but I'd rather be fighting till the last under your leadership, sir."

"But where do we even start?" asked Bill.

"We need a reputable witch, I mean someone who's like second to Tiffany." I said.

"Well, we're not sure if Granny Weatherwax has died by now." said Jonathan, "However I'd think she has, so that leaves us with Queen Magrat."

"Who?" I asked.

"Look, witches work in groups, covens, and the reason why the Baroness was being hunted down was because she had some natural abilities with magic, and I'm not so sure with Amber Petty but I heard she was also adept with some sort of magic, so these two plus Tiffany formed - somewhat - the Chalk Coven." explained Jonathan.

"So who's Weatherwax and Magrat?" asked Bill.

"Granny Weatherwax was the head witch around here, Tiffany was her student, and Queen Magrat was her coven-mate along with Nanny Ogg." said Jonathan, he then wrapped up with, "And that's the way it is."

"Did you just quote Walter-"

"Yes, I just did." Jonathan interrupted Jeb.

"Okay, where do we find Amber?" I asked.

The Baroness stood up, "I think we can find her, I mean if you know what you're doing, well you're the only one who has thought up of something."

"Okay, go find Amber, we'll be heading to this place called Lancre." I said, "wherever it is."

"It's just in the hills, you should follow the river up until you see a waterfall, Lancre is that area, now you'll have to climb up the mountains-"

"Nope, I can land the lander there." said Jeb with confidence, interrupting Jonathan.

Jonathan's eyes grew and exclaimed "Are you sure!? Lancre is located on a steep hill area, there is barely any flat surfaces there."

"Ah but they have a castle with grounds and everything?" asked Jeb.

"Y-..yes." said Jonathan.

"Then it's settled, we can use the lander." said Jeb, "What do you say, chief?"

I nodded, the faster the better, and I would not want to be walking around in a world gone mad, "I second the motion, you have my blessings." I said.

"But where would I be sitting in then? I mean I sure do hope that your capsule has advanced beyond Gemini!" said Jonathan.

"Well we would need a person to stay here, that would be you Bill." I said.

Bill nodded, "Yes sir, I'll keep guard of the castle, sir."

"Good, now we need to head back to the lander and get out of here." I said, "Oh and Bill, hand me the keys."

The crowds outside have dispersed, the streets were empty and they were all back home resting or something, as far as I was concerned, we were safe to go to the lander.

When we reached the lander, we stowed the guns into the gun locker and suited up, including Jonathan, these suits were meant to help us with the high gs we are going to experience, those engines beneath us were designed to give this ship a relatively high thrust to weight ratio.

"Alright, checklist, Jeb; Booster?"

"GO"

"Guidance?"

"GO"

"CAPCOM"

"GO"

"Life Support?"

"GO"

"Alright, we're go for flight." I said.

The engines punched the ship on a pillar of blue-ish flame, or so what the cameras showed us, we experienced four plus gs of acceleration, we were going fast.

###

From the Interview of Ares P. Bacon:

We were arrested and brought to the nearby Watch station, we were placed together in a cell of our own, and the night went kind of uneventful given that we were simply booked, processed, and left in the cell.

Now the really interesting things happened the next day when we woke up, we were actually awakened by some sort of commotion outside, I remembered waking up and seeing Bob looking out through the bars and saying "Uh…Bacon, I think there's some social unrest."

I got out of my bed and looked out through the bars, we saw a woman being lynched by a mob while the Watch guards tried their best to do crowd control, they were failing somehow.

We then noticed that a big shadow has fallen around us, I turned around and saw Detritus outside our cell, he unlocked it, "Now you tree ned to sae the Patrician."

"In this madness!?" exclaimed Bob.

Another voice interjected, "Not without me." said the man, he looked a lot like Clint Eastwood and I have no idea why that crossed my mind, "I am Commander Vimes of the City Watch, I run the Watch and right now the Patrician has commanded me to bring you three to him, he wants to meet you."

"Who's the Patrician?" asked John.

This Commander Vimes simply tapped the jail bars with his truncheon, "The Patrician does not like to wait."

We quickly filed out of the cell, when we stepped out of the station there was a carriage waiting for us, a black one, and a man was seated inside. We boarded the carriage and saw this well dressed man, he looked sharp and intimidating, as if he runs the whole city, and also that is to say he also looks slightly annoyed.

"Gentlemen, I summoned you here in the most utmost of importance, I know that you have come from space?" said this Patrician, "My apologies, I am Vetinari, you may only call me that."

"Sir, Patrician Vetinari, how did you know that?" I asked, "I am Ares P. Bacon, sir."

"I have encountered a human from your own world, and he has informed me that we have guests." said Vetinari.

"You mean Jonathan Reacher?" said Bob, that's when I remembered what Mission Commander has mentioned about an Earth human having been teleported to this world years ago.

"Yes." said Vetinari.

"Mister Patrician, what is it that you need for us to do?" I asked.

The Patrician then struck the floor of the carriage with his cane and the carriage moved, "I shall be bringing you to my office for a much more in depth briefing, gentlemen."

As we drove through the city streets of this Ankh Morpork, we saw chaos everywhere, I mean law men having to disperse rioters and shop owners having to fend for themselves and their shops.

"You see, gentlemen, my city wasn't always like this, it has never ever been like this under my watch." said Vetinari.

"Well, we're also taken aback as you are, I saw this city yesterday and it was orderly, sir." I said.

"Well now, as you can see, there is anarchy, nearly anarchy, everywhere as the Watch tries to enforce peace and order." said Vetinari, "The wizards told me that they have encountered, or detected, some unusual and sudden outburst of M-energy, or whatever term they used, that had caused this."

"M for madness then, eh?" joked John.

"I find your humor to be of goodwill but I see that it does not help our situation at all." said Bob.

"Okay, you two, cut it out!" I said, and then to Vetinari, "Look, sir, our fellow crew mates are at the Chalk - or whatever the place is - trying to solve it, sir, and we will try to help your world."

"Oh good." said Vetinari, "I always thought that Tiffany Aching and the witches was always on top of these ancient magic from the Chalk or Lancre, but it seems that you have taken the role of heroes."

"Not that we want to." said Bob, shaking his head.

"Ah, then the reluctant hero always wins, just as we always say." said Vetinari.


	11. Part 10 - Hail Columbia!

From the interview with Ares P. Bacon;

We were taken to this castle, or sprawling palace actually, it was the city state's own White House; the Patrician's Palace, and it was big, I think it was the biggest building in this cramped and somewhat messy city, it looked a lot like those pictures of Victorian era London mixed with 1900s New York or something.

These people had steam trains and I do believe they are experimenting with steam cars, but I digress, so we were brought to the Patrician's palace and we followed the Patrician Vetinari to his oval shaped office, it caused us to giggle slightly, the shape of the office makes the oval office look round.

This tall and slender and striking figure of a Patrician, whatever that title was, sat behind his wide desk with the map of the Disc on it, "Gentlemen, I do believe it's time to hear from the wizards, I brought you here because I know you have the technology to assist us - those wizards, however good intentions they have, tend to blow things up, sometimes."

"Wizards? Oh yes the university we landed on." I said.

The Patrician then rung the bell and his assistant shuffled in, "What can I get you, sir?"

"Have you summoned the faculty of Unseen University, Drumknott?" asked Vetinari.

"Oh yes, I have summoned them already and they are on their way." said Drumknott.

We then heard a crash, like an explosion, and then a loud 'twang' like that of a crossbow, "Ah, it's the wizards." said Vetinari, slightly annoyed.

The door slammed open as these troop of red robe wearing old men entered the office, "Ah, Archchancellor." said Vetinari.

The Archcancellor was the biggest one of the wizards, he had a hat full of -...all sorts of these outdoor stuff ranging from fishing lines, fishing hooks, and even crossbow bolts, in fact he had been holding a crossbow bolt, "Ah, so sorry, my lord, for the-…mess." he said as he stuck the crossbow into a drawer in his hat.

"Hex detected a major energy disruption." said this wizard with a large pair of round glasses.

"Ah, yes, that…" said the Archchancellor.

"Gentlemen, we have guests here." said Vetinari, referring to us, "They are from space."

"Wow, spacemen?" said the Archcancellor, shaking my hand, "What would be your names then?"

"My name is Ares P. Bacon, these here are John A. Howell, and Bob L. Meadows, and yes we are from space." I said.

"But you look like humans." said one of the wizards.

"You see, Dean, some of the planets out there could potentially have life that looks like us." explained the one with glasses, "Just like through our experiments with roundworld."

"Say, are you from a roundworld?" asked the Archchancellor, "Name's Mudstrum Ridcully by the way, this one here is the Dean, and this one here is Ponder Stibbons, and…that one is…the Bursar."

"Yes, we are from a world that is round." I said, "And admittedly without any form of magic."

"Are you sure?" asked Ponder, "Because I think it's a bit too coincidental that you came here and this mysterious energy goes through the Disc and affected the Hub area."

"Now, now, Mister Stibbons, let's not be too rude to our guests." said the Archchancellor.

"Well, it's just that Hex has showed that-...the wave has originated from a planetary body nearby." said Ponder.

I felt kind of hopeless and guilty at that point, "Look, the authorities back at our home has taken responsibility for whatever damage caused, however we're not sure what we did precisely."

"Say, my lord, is this…these men from the same world that the other guy-…teleported to our university?" asked the Archchancellor.

I heard the briefing of the Mission Commander, "Yes, if you mean by Jonathan Reacher, then yes he is from our planet."

"Ah, then you people indeed have amazing teleportation..techniques." said Ponder, I'm not sure if he's making fun of us but oh well, "I mean being able to teleport the entire Disc into another timeline, or rather removing some parts of the Disc and shoving other versions of the Disc around."

"What?" I was lost.

Ponder then reached into the depths of his wizard robes and pulled out a newspaper, "Here, I have a newspaper report of Tiffany Aching defeating the Cunning Man…or rather…being defeated by the Cunning Man…or whatever happened."

"Look, when did that news break?" I asked.

"Supposedly two years ago, but then I guess several things have happened, several small things…I mean now things are becoming shaky." said Ponder, he then pulled out another paper, "Ah, this one is from the same date of the timeline we were from, and this bad one is from the same date of the bad timeline."

I got the papers from him and looked at them, based on the Mission Commander's ramblings on this Tiffany Aching, the good one meant a victory for the witches against the Cunning Man and the elves, but the bad one meant…well whatever is going on now;

Witch hunts going everywhere, rioting in the cities, innocents being burned, lies and discord being the new law.

Now, Bob, who I noticed was the emotional of us three, or at least someone who actually cared for the environment, you know those types that understand and value his surroundings, shook his head and said, "You people don't deserve this at all." he said, addressing the locals.

"The situation, I'm afraid, is already upon us, it's good that you have taken collective responsibility." said the Archchancellor, "But the question now is how to fix it."

I decided to throw my hat into the ring, "Call an…expert?" I suggested.

The Archchancellor brightened, he snapped his fingers and said "I think we can commit to a rite of AshKente!"

"But wouldn't that a bit too difficult to do here?" asked the Dean.

"Nonsense, Dean, Ponder here told me that he made a 'Rite of ashkente in a box', right Mister Stibbons?" said the Archchancellor.

Ponder nodded and reached into his robes and pulled out a small box, like about the size of our walkie talkies, "Are you sure you want to summon Death in front of-" he swung his head towards us, "them?"

"Well, we're trying to help." I said, "Go ahead."

"You hear them, Stibbons, push the button." said the Archchancellor.

When I first thought of the idea of summoning Death, I initially thought that it was a name of some magical creature that was just powerful enough to earn the name, but apparently we summoned Death; skeletal bones, scythe, black robes and all.

I remembered seeing Bob freaking out when the smoke cleared and there stood Death with his scythe, and a mouse version of him on his shoulder, "D-…it's really Death!" exclaimed Bob.

John slapped Bob hard on the back, "Come on man, stop freaking out over everything just this once!"

Death's blue 'eyes' looked at us, 'IS THIS ABOUT THE THING SUSAN TOLD ME ABOUT?'

"Susan? Oh your granddaughter, right?" asked the Archchancellor.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself at that point, Death had a granddaughter? That was a weird idea to be honest and I myself couldn't believe it, so anyhow Death then replied 'YES, INDEED, SO IS THIS ABOUT THE TIME ISSUE SHE TOLD ME?'

His voice sounded heavy and like a casket lid being slowly shut with all the spooky squeaky hinge effects thrown in, "Yes, we're sorry about it, we're trying to fix it." I found myself saying.

'SOME PEOPLE TEND TO RUN AWAY FROM THEIR PROBLEMS, YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THEM.' said Death.

"Look, I do believe that your granddaughter is now with the very personification of Time?" asked the Archchancellor.

'LOBSANG LUDD? YES.'

"Can we at least meet with him?" asked the Archchancellor.

'IF YOU INSIST, I CAN BRING THEM HERE, JUST GIVE ME A MOMENT' said Death, and not before long he disappeared, just like a snap of a finger, but then he showed up again as quickly as he had left.

But this time he had this white haired serious looking woman and a man who looked energetic and a exact opposite of the woman, "Ah, Susan, we hope that we had not interrupted anything important." began the Archchancellor.

"Please do tell me that you're not wasting my time, or rather if said time was ruined." said Susan.

"Look, we're trying to fix the situation here, please tell us how we can help." I said.

"They're from another world, like from space." interjected the Archchancellor.

The plucky young looking man spoke to us, "Well, the good news is that we have the situation under control at the Monastery, but we have a bit of a problem."

"We're all ears." said John.

"What we are experiencing is a sudden surge of energy throughout the Monastery and-" he must have spotted our faces when he said 'Monastery', "There exist monks who make sure that time flows smoothly, and since this is a aberration of time then therefore it is our job to fix it."

"Oh, cool." said Bob.

"Our world exists because of the magic around the center, the hub." explained this Lobsang, "The energy of time and of magic flows towards the hub, the energy of time is 'burned off' at the Monastery while the energy of magic goes to the hub and is shot back out to the edge again."

"So what's the problem with the piping then?" I asked.

"Due to your, somewhat impressive, blast of temporal energy, there is a clog in the system that prevents us from fixing it." said Lobsang.

"So how can we fix this?" asked the Archchancellor.

"We'll need a powerful kinetic blast at the hub, adding more magic energy might destroy the system completely rather than help it, same thing with time energy, so now we'll need to use a kinetic energy." said Lobsang.

"Oh, so it's like what I tend to do with Hex." said the Archchancellor, much to the annoyance of Ponder, "Just give it the good old kick."

"Wait, buy how?" asked Ponder, "The last time we tried to split the Thaum…I mean it's just magic energy."

I then realized that we could actually be helpful in this situation, "We have developed a powerful weapon that has the power to obliterate this city with just one bomb." I said.

"That should be enough, I guess." said Lobsang, "But please do tell me how you're going to get it on target?"

"Target?" asked Bob.

"We need this explosion to be precisely at the choke point, which we are still trying to find." said Lobsang.

"We can always strike it from orbit." said John.

"That might make things worse, it might feed the area of high magic energy rather than thump it." said Ponder, he then further explained "You see, with such a choke point, there might be a good chance that a magical build up in that area has caused a force field, so anything dropped above and away from-…well we would have to have a new term for the border between the atmosphere and space - would be deflected or destroyed."

It's harder than the dam busters, "How precise is precise?" I asked.

"We can only be off by about ten meters from target, that's it." said Lobsang.

"No orbital strikes?" clarified John.

"No." said Ponder, "Does your people have the capability to do this?"

I had no answer, so I just turned to our friends at Mission Control with the walkie talkie, "Uh…this is Apollo Orbiter, Houston, we have a problem here…no, I mean a solution to our problems."

###

From the journal of Mission Commander James Thompson:

One of Jeb's greatest achievements just had to be how he was able to land the lander within the walls of Lancre castle without hitting any of the walls, or rather without missing the target.

Lancre is this big area like the Swiss alps, it's really mountainous and it is indeed a nightmare to try to land anything around here, I wonder how the witches are able to do it, I heard that Lancre is a place chock full of witches. If ever they have a sign that says 'Lancre, the place of witches' they should add 'and two astronauts' to that.

Once we stepped out of the lander, we were immediately greeted by - according Jonathan - Lancre's one and only soldier and postman, Shawn Ogg, "Ah, Mister Reacher is it?"

"Yes." said Jonathan.

"What brings you here?" asked Shawn.

"We need to meet the Queen, immediately." said Jonathan.

"I'm sorry, but she ordered me not to allow anyone to see her." said Shawn.

"Why?" I asked rather sternly.

"Because she's in mourning, sir."

"Oh…"I stepped back, "I'm so sorry."

"Who died?" asked Jonathan.

Shawn removed his helmet and wept, "Mum and…Granny Weatherwax."

"Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax are dead!?" exclaimed Jonathan, "But that means-…Magrat is the only witch of the coven!"

"How bad is that?" asked Jeb.

"Imagine Capitol Hill being nuked during a State of the Union Address." said Jonathan.

"That is bad." said Jeb.

Shawn nodded, "Sir, please, we're not in the-…we really are in…"

Jonathan felt sorry for the kid, he patted him on the shoulder, "Sorry, I was insensitive, but we're here to help you see."

Shawn brightened up a bit, "Help, how?"

"How did Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax die?" asked Jonathan.

"Granny Weatherwax died naturally, but old Mum was surrounded by elves." said Shawn before being overcome with tears.

"The elves are nearby!?" exclaimed Jonathan, he then turned to us and said, "Gentlemen, go get your M-16s, from what I've heard, these elves are gonna be a big problem, but iron is their biggest problem."

I turned to Jeb and jerked a thumb at the lander, our pilot went to the lander and came out holding two M-16s, he gave Jonathan and I the rifles, and then he went back in again.

We then Jeb with a flamethrower at his back, he locked the hatch and went back to us. "Jeb, where the hell did you hide that flamethrower?" I asked, it was one of those old flamethrowers from the second world war.

"Just right beside the Browning .50 cal." said Jeb, "Come on, I had to sacrifice my '2 kilos worth of entertainment' just to negotiate with NASA to allow me to bring my father's flamethrower and old bessie."

"Old Bessie? You named the machine gun?" asked Jonathan.

"Yup." said Jeb with a smile.

"Did you lock the hatch?" I asked.

"Yes, sir." said Jeb.

Suddenly we heard a scream and a female voice saying "Verence? VERENCE!"

"The Queen!" exclaimed Shawn, who then immediately ran back in.

Jonathan then spotted something or someone, he pointed and said, "There, the elves are kidnapping the King!" We saw a pair of those slime balls, they were slender and perfect looking, but to me they registered simply as 'jerks' that needed to be shot.

Now, I would like to request for someone with a gun to pull this next trick off just to make sure that I was not dreaming, Jonathan - with an M-16 - was able to pick off one of those elves on the head from a distance of about eight to ten meters, plus there was a hostage being carried off by the arms in between the two targets.

As for the other elf, the sucker just ran for it. "Where the hell did they come from?" wondered Jonathan.

We quickly went to the supposed King of this realm, he looked like a clown actually, but that's alright given how Jonathan introduced him to us, "Gentlemen, this here is King Verence II, he was a clown before."

King Verence was fast asleep, I told Jonathan to hold my gun while I did a fireman carry of the King, "Alright, now let's go!" I exclaimed.

We made it as fast we could to the door leading into the safe confines of the castle, where a weeping and somewhat nearly hysterical woman with a tiara, the Queen, was on the floor, looking hopeless.

"Your majesty," I said, "I do believe that this here is your husband."

She looked up to us, shot up from the floor and took Verence into her arms, she then gently sat him down on a chair and called for Shawn to assist her in getting some herbs and things that would help him.

Once Shawn was away, the woman embraced her husband and then she looked at us, "Who are you three?"

"I am the Bar-…no, we are here to save the day, pretty much." said Jonathan.

"You carry strange weapons." said the woman, "I am Queen Magrat Garlick by the way."

"You may call me James, this here is Jonathan, and that there with the funny thing on his back would be Jeb." I said.

Magrat then left the side of her husband and approached us, "Wait a minute, I think I recognize you, Jonathan, weren't you present at the Old Baron's funeral and the current Baron's wedding?"

"Yes, your majesty." said Jonathan.

Magrat embraced the three of us individually, including a peck on the cheek, "Gentlemen, thank you so much for saving my husband…and for basically showing up!"

"We are also sorry for the loss of your friends." I said.

Magrat sighed, "I know, not at this time, why did it have to be at this time?"

I patted her on the shoulder, "Your majesty, we arrived on time."

"Wait, your majesty, where are you children?" asked Jonathan.

"They're safe at Ankh-Morpork, I hope." said Magrat.

Something then hit me, "Where did those elves come from?" I asked.

"The Dancers, it's a portal not far from here." said Magrat.

"Is there one near the Chalk?" I asked.

"Yes." said Magrat.

Jonathan slapped his forehead, "How the hell have I forgotten that? The Chalk sits at the mouth of an elven portal!"

"Oh my god, Bill!" exclaimed Jeb.

"We have to call in reinforcements while we try to hold two positions at the same time." I said, but then as I was about to reach for the walkie talkie, it buzzed.

"This is Apollo Orbiter at Ankh-Morpork, Mission Commander?"

"Misison Commander here." I replied.

"Sir, we have found the solution to our problem." said Ares, and oh boy were we suddenly all ears towards the walkie talkie.

"What do we need? What is the solution?" asked Jeb.

"I don't know how to explain it clearly so you guys can understand, but let's just say that your car's-…uh…engine is kind of choked up and you do not have the tools to disassemble it, what do you do?" said Ares.

Oh great, a riddle, "I would usually kick my car by the front bumper, sometimes it would run and sometimes my feet is left to throb."

"Precisely," said Ares, "we need to do something like that, but in a larger scale, like the scale of this world."

"How?" I asked.

"They said we need a big source of kinetic force, I thought atomic bomb, on a precise target, and we could only be a few feet off, like only a few feet off." explained Ares.

"Thank God for the presence of the Russians, I heard they have nukes." said Jeb with a sigh of relief to boot.

"Not so fast, Jeb, the reason this world exists would be the center of the Disc where all the magic comes from, so there is this something like a convection current where the magic would be blasted out into the edge and then it would come back, so there is something stopping this convection and we can give the world a hard thump for the convection to begin, but…"

"The energy has dammed up at the choke point." I said.

"Precisely, so if we try any orbital strike, the amount of energy that has built up is so high that the warhead might be destroyed before it even reaches the target." said Ares, "We might need to go horizontally, if you know what I mean."

"So we need to pull off like the dam busters." said Jeb with a grin, "But with a nuclear bomb."

"One hundred percent like the dam busters." said Ares, "I have explained it to Mission Control and they told me to explain it to the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff."

"When can we speak to them?" I asked.

"Whenever the new one is going to be sworn into office." said Ares.

"New one? What happened to Nixon?"

"Er…"

###

'NIXON CALLS IT QUITS, VP MUFFLEY NOW PRES.' - The New York Times, November 25, 1973.

Nixon resigned in the wake of the scandal that emerged from the broadcast by Mission Commander James Thompson. It all started from the C.I.A Director being fired and going on air to admit that his agency did something very stupid that could not be kept a secret.

This has led to accusations that Richard Nixon was behind the experiment, although they were only rumors, the real cause for his resignation was the announcement by the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that there would be an investigation.

Plus, Nixon was phoned by senior Republican Congressmen and Senators suggesting that he step down or else there will be an impeachment proceeding, and so that's how the famous image of Nixon boarding Marine One, the Presidential Helicopter, and showing a pair of 'V-signs' became famous.

Most celebrated Nixon's resignation, however his replacement was Vice President Jack Muffley, often regarded as a Jack in the aces of the White House, not only did the new President have himself issues with earning the vote of confidence of some of his peers and the bigwigs at Washington D.C, but he also has an interplanetary problem.

Muffley was a near-bald man with large round glasses, and as soon as he was sworn in the by the Chief Justice, he immediately went to the Cabinet meeting table and summoned the Administrator of NASA as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Administrator of NASA was unable to hold his excitement, "Mister President, we have a solution."

Muffley looked at him and said, "Oh, that's brilliant- sniff…Uh…wait, achooo! Sorry." he had a slight cold at the time.

"Uh, sir, here's a box of tissues." the Chief of the Navy passed him a box of tissues.

"Thank you." Muffley said to the Admiral, "Sorry, you were saying?"

"Mister President, we can have the Mission Commander explain his situation and the solution to this table, we can phone the Disc." said the NASA Administrator, "Actually that phone would work, just phone up the normal presidential line to Houston and we'll transfer the call to the Apollo Cruiser who would then transfer it to either the Lander or the Orbiter."

Muffley wiped his nose with a tissue just as he reached for the phone and dialed the number, "Hello, Houston, this is the President and I'm phoning-…the D-..Achoo! The Discworld!"

"Just one second, Mister President…wait, who do you want to speak to precisely?" asked the Flight Director on the other end of the line.

"Can't we have a conference call or something?"

"Yes sir, of course sir."

Muffley had to wait for a while, he was expecting at least something to fill in the silence, maybe static background noise or beeps they'd always here during the moon missions. "Hello, Mister President? This here is the Mission Commander?"

"Oh, can you explain to us your situation?" said Muffley.

"We're under siege, we're having a military emergency actually, we're stuck in castle within a small kingdom surrounded by hostiles, sir." said Thompson, "We're seeking permission to request military aid from the Soviets in orbit."

Muffley shot a glance at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the old Marine Corps Commandant and now the Chairman, who simply shrugged and gave a hand gesture that was generally understood us, 'To hell with it, let's say yes'.

"Yes, yes, you may request for backup, I do believe they owe us something." said Muffley, he knew about the order to kill the rogue Soviet ship, but with a disaster at this magnitude, petty politics can get brushed aside quickly.

"Okay, sir, we really need additional help, mainly we would need something that could fly like a bomber and deliver a nuclear warhead with extreme precision, like we could only be a few feet off." said Thompson.

The Chief of the Air Force motioned for the phone's receiver, "Ah, uh Mission Commander? The Air Force would like to speak with you."

Muffley handed the phone to the Air Force chief, who knew Thompson personally, "Captain Thompson, this is General Brackburg speaking, why can't we conduct an orbital strike?"

Thompson explained the whole choke point concept as well as the magical energies and the whole nature of the Disc, "So therefore if we try to blast it from space, the warhead would be deflected, but if we were to fly horizontally like a bomber, we can pierce through the force field and drop the bomb on target."

"But that would be impossible!" roared the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, "I believe that our nuclear strike plans allow for bombs to be off target by as far as a mile or two."

"Well, we have no other choice, sir." said Thompson.

"Don't worry, we have a solution." said General Brackburg, "We were developing an advanced spaceship, or space plane, that can be launched like a rocket and flown like a plane in the atmosphere for recovery, we call it the Space Shuttle, but our version differs from the plans of NASA."

"Good, but we'll also need to blast these scumbag hostiles." said Thompson, "They're nasty, trust me when I say that they're not human, they're above humans."

"Don't worry we have our Blue Big Geminis on standby, maybe the Marines can help, right?" said Brackburg, glancing at the Marine Corps Commandant.

"Yes." said the Commandant, "Our boys will get your problems and kick their butts to kingdom come!"

"So that's a confirmation from the Marines." said Brackburg to Thompson, "We'll be launching immediately, we have already been training for a situation like this."

"Ever since when? How long have we been gone?" asked Thompson, "I mean after the landing?"

"About a month now."said Brackburg.

"Time does run different here." said Thompson, "Anyhow, when can reinforcements reach us?" he asked.

"Barring any mysterious things, and using a fast orbital insertion, five months at the most." said Brackburg.

There was a pause before Thompson replied, "Alright, I think we can hold up for that long."

"But remember, there might be something that may shorten our flight, so keep your heads above the water, gentlemen." said Brackburg, "I'm handing you back to the President."

Muffley received the phone, "Gentlemen, do not worry, we're coming for you, and we're going to save the world that we condemned."

When the phone was done, Muffley asked, "How fast until we can deploy the plan, General?"

"Twenty four hours, sir." said Brackburg, "We'll be launching from Kennedy Space Center, Vandenburg Air Force base, and other top secret places, we will be assembling a flotilla of Blue Big Geminis and their weapons platform, all to be led by the jewel in the crown, the Space Shuttle Columbia."

"But how about the troops?" asked Muffley.

"Sir, they would be in the Blue Big Geminis and the modified MOL, Manned Orbital Laboratory, modules. Each BBG and MOL unit can carry sixteen troops comfortably, we can shuttle about 80 of them, plus an additional nine in the Columbia, but the Space Shuttle might be used as a supersonic bomber once it reaches the Disc." explained Brackburg.

"Okay, I think eighty troops will be enough…uh…what is the space shuttle?" asked Muffley.

"Sir," began the NASA Administrator, "we are building our own space shuttle and we cannot get it execute an interplanetary mission, so I want to see what the Air Force has done to the design."

"You'll see what we changed." said Brackburg with a grin.

###

'HAIL COLUMBIA! - UNCLE SAM'S FIRST SPACE SHUTTLE' - The Florida Daily, November 27, 1973

'Good day to you our viewers across America and the globe, what we're about to witness is probably the most historic, heroic, and urgent endeavor in the history of spaceflight.' - Walter Cronkite, CBS News.

The Space Shuttle was one of the designs part of the Apollo Space Transportation System, or the Integrated Manned Program, infrastructure, it was to be a space plane capable of taking off like a rocket, reaching low Earth orbit, and being able to land back on Earth like an airplane, it is to be reusable.

The problem with the Shuttle was that it was too heavy to be placed into an Earth escape orbit, or rather they do not have big enough rockets to push the Shuttle orbiter beyond low Earth orbit, and also it relies on an external tank for fuel for its three shuttle engines.

But the monster that was found to be sitting on the launchpad at LC-39A, the launchpad which Apollo 11 and the Apollo Interplanetary missions launched from , was far different from NASA's scientific and 'civilian' shuttle design.

For one it looked like a mix of a fighter jet, the Concorde, and the Valkyrie experimental bomber with its modified delta wings that angled upwards as it reached the tips, plus it was painted in an air force gray-white with a hint of blue, it was named the Columbia.

The Columbia was sitting on top of a Saturn V MLV B, where its four engines was visible for the whole world to see that it meant business, that it was far different from NASA's three engined space shuttle.

There were also a bunch of top secret sensors, scanners, and devices used by the Air Force, nearly all of which are kept a secret from the public, and even the cockpit area was different, whereas the normal shuttle would have this feel similar to the Apollo capsule or the cockpit of an airliner, the Columbia's cockpit felt more like a mix of a bridge of a carrier and a Combat Information Center of a battleship, complete with swiveling chairs and consoles.

The crew that was designated to fly the brand new military variant of the space shuttle was Air Force Major Tom Harrison, along with his crew of four; Pilot Abraham Jackson, Co-pilot Matthew Toleador, Mission Specialist - Sensory Joshua Santos, and Mission Specialist - Medic Dr. Steve Josephine.

The Columbia had a cargo bay, where they were supposed to add extra habitation modules for the troops, however that plan was discarded since they're supposed to drop bombs with the Shuttle like a bomber with its ventral bay doors, another thing which the normal Shuttle cannot do; fly like a normal powered airplane and not just a un-powered glider, and having bay doors at the bottom in addition to the ones at the top.

Air Force Major Tom Harrison, the special mission commander for Task Force Chalk - that was the name adopted since it was where the Apollo Lander first touched down - would later recount the whole experience during a commencement speech at West Point Military Academy;

We had been training for a ground situation on the Discworld for months, but it was more of astronaut training and special operations training, we were initially called Task Force Interplanetary, however the officers of the Task Force agreed to change it to Task Force Chalk, or Task Force Charlie, after the location of the first touch down of the Lander was known to us.

We were given the call to suit up on November 25, 1973, the Task Force were split into two, depending on where the strike teams' designated modules were at, either at Vandenberg Air Force Base or at the Kennedy Space Center.

I was assigned the experimental USAF SS, or the US Air Force Space Shuttle, and was made Task Force commander by the higher ups, something which I felt honored to have been appointed to the position.

As early as 21:00 hours on November 25, the first Blue Big Geminis were launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base, they were the air force Big Geminis which were larger Gemini capsules that had a cargo module for a service module and could comfortably house 12 crew members, or 1 pilot and 11 soldiers, plus each Big Gemini has a assigned Mobile Weapons Platform that could carry six soldiers as well as twelve nuclear warheads.

As for us, our showtime was on November 27, 1973, and the feeling of suiting up and heading out with your crew to the bus was some form experience no other officer nor soldier could have unless you were there with me, the eyes of the world were set upon us as we boarded the bus and went to the launchpad.

We went through the usual checklists, however what was different with our mission was that we're under the eyes of NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain Base besides NASA at Houston, and there was this one annoying thing that carried on throughout the whole mission; "This is NORAD ground control to Major Tom"

The pilot Abraham Jackson was the first one to laugh when those words came through our earpieces, oh boy how much I had wanted to give a fist sandwich for that.

But I kept my cool, miraculously enough for them, and we were told to lower our visors and prepare for terminal count, even before the number reached zero the main engines were ignited and the four powerful brand new solid rocket boosters followed next.

The next eight minutes of our lives were probably the longest we've ever found ourselves being pushed, or more like being buried, against our chairs, there was even reports of shattered windows and car alarms going off in _**Miami**_.

Once we were in orbit, we rendezvoused with the fleet of Big Geminis waiting for the order to execute our Trans-Planetary Burn, they were all launched on top of Saturn V MLV B rockets, and our mission profile matched that of the Apollo Cruiser, except we took into account the infinite fuel effect once we are in the vicinity of the Discworld.

We executed our Trans-Planetary Burn about eighteen hours after rendezvous, using the Earth's gravity well to slingshot us straight towards the Discworld, Task Force Chalk/Charlie was destined for the Disc, for destiny. Hang on Mission Commander, or shall I say Air Force Captain, James Thompson, Major Tom is here to save you all!

###

A/N: I would like to dedicate this chapter to Apollo 12 Astronaut Alan Bean (15th March 1932 - 26th May 2018), I heard the news of his passing on TV while I was writing the chapter, he was the 4th person to walk on the Moon.


	12. Part 11 - Endgame

From the journal of Mission Commander James Thomspon:

Now the thing about those Russians is that while we're kind of suspicious of them, we were equally surprised that they were still there in orbit even after we've told them of the problem, and it was on their own decision to send backup to poor old Bill who was, based on what we've heard from him, alone but waiting eagerly for the enemy.

There's a reason why his nickname back in Korea was 'Bill the Killer', I heard that guy fought with the Filipino Battalion Combat Team units when his fireteam was trapped with them at Yultong, those guys who apparently made it their past time to either hold positions against the enemy for months on end with no backup or to chase after and trap the enemy and really give 'em a good kicking, and if you'd think it would be a good idea to try to entrap a Battalion Combat Team…just ask the communists at Yultong, they'll give you a thousand reasons not to do so.

Backup came in the shape of a green colored lander, like a bigger Soyuz, and out came a group of four men and one woman, and I am telling you that that one woman looked like an army equivalent to the four, not to mention how she had natural red hair, she just carries around this air of command and of the good old Soviet grit.

Their lander touched down about ten meters away from our lander, either a streak of good luck for the Soviets or they're really good at piloting their spacecrafts, I heard they kept on losing cosmonauts in accidents, or at least more than the number of astronauts we've lost.

We immediately met them outside, while keeping our eyes and ears out for those elves or for any threat that may suddenly show up to ruin the reception, I saluted the young woman, "I am Captain James Thompson, Mission Commander, madam."

The young woman saluted back, "Elena Valentina Sablin, Mission Commander of the Soviet expedition, it's nice to meet you." she said in somewhat fluent English but marred by her accent, "I think you should know that I've also sent a similarly sized contingent to the Chalk, or so based on what you've told us."

"Thank you." I said, before introducing those around me, "This here is Jeb, that guy there is Jonathan, and this here is Her Majesty Queen Magrat."

Elena curtsied, "Well, this here would be my boys," the other four Russians then chuckled, "Ivan, Joseph, Peter, and Stan."

I would like to note that they were armed with AK-47, aka the ultimate 'bad guy' gun or that's how we recognized it, and yet here we are, the AK-47 and the M-16, sworn enemies fighting side by side.

"So, when does the party start?" asked Elena.

"Depends, where's the enemy?" remarked Jonathan.

"They will come, eventually." said Magrat, the way she said it made her cryptic, but then I remembered that she was a witch.

"Were you invaded before?" I asked.

"I fought the Elf Queen during my wedding day!" exclaimed Magrat.

I remembered Jeb's eyes growing in astonishment before saying, "Heh, well I spilled coffee on my suit on my wedding day and I thought it was the end of the world!"

You know, someone would later explain to me, once this whole episode was over, that the Disc runs on story, or narrativium, so it's like what you see in the movies when things just seem to happen 'on time', not like in real life when sometimes the reinforcements come in too late or when we have to wait for the main event.

This was best displayed when Shawn Ogg came running to us from the inside of the castle saying, "Your majesty, the elves are at the gates!"

"Just on time!" said Jeb, waving his flamethrower stick around.

"No, we don't fight them head on." I said, "Mister Ogg, please open the gates and allow them to enter."

They all stared at me with 'O' shaped mouths, "Why?" asked Magrat.

"Because we have these things, and this thing." I said, referring to our guns and the flamethrower, "And a bigger version of these guns at the lander!"

I saw that expression of realization on Jeb's face, "Oh, I see what you mean! I'll go get the Old Bessie and you tell me where to set it up!" and he ran back to the lander.

"Alright, all of those with guns right now, take position at the windows, keep your head down and make sure that each shot counts! Fire by the machine gun's shot!" I said, "Everyone else, just hide somewhere safe." I do not know where exactly a safe place is within the castle.

Once Jeb had the machine gun, he went in inside, and I had one last look at the castle grounds before the place gets overrun, or rather temporarily overrun by the elves.

There was not much drama with the prelude to the shootout, we simply left the doors unlocked, the gate opened, and made sure that we had at least two guns trained at all corners of the castle, and then there was the machine gun trained at the grounds and the gate.

As soon as Shawn had opened the gates leading to the grounds, the first batch of elves showed up, somewhat confused and surprised, but just like a predator seeing an unguarded prey, they smiled and carried on.

They smiled and carried on into our sights, these three perfect-looking imbeciles were in the firing line, however as we were about to shoot we saw one of the scouting elves turn around and run out through the gate, that caught us by surprise.

But what was even more surprising was the next batch of elves, or rather next batch of persons - an elf in red, an elf dressed in regal-military clothing, and Tiffany Aching; yes, I am sure that it was her, oh and a gray thing stood beside them, floating.

Jeb cocked the machine gun and whispered, "Eat some lea-" but I yanked his hand away.

"Shh, don't shoot!" I ordered.

Now you know how this Discworld runs on stories? Well interestingly enough we could hear the 'bad guys' do their diabolical planning, it would be great if we were hidden in the same room as those guys but they were meters downwards and away from us on the castle grounds.

This Not-Tiffany spoke, "Well, here you have it, the death of all witches!"

The Elf Queen, the one in red, smiled, "I have no idea that you could have done it, Cunning Man."

"Yes, we are very pleased with you now, Queen." said the other 'General' or 'Lord' elf.

The grey thing -…now that thing looked like it came from an episode of Star Trek or something, it had no mouth but it somehow 'spoke', "The elves and other creatures like you, Cunning Man, we can tolerate, but we cannot tolerate those complex minded ones, like the humans."

Jeb turned to me and said, "Can't we give them a quick Nuremburg Trial? I mean they're planning to commit genocide!"

The Queen had patted the 'Not-Tiffany' on the back, "And just imagine I'd fought with you, darling." before laughing.

Here's where it got a bit hazy for me at least, but I could've swore that I saw this 'Not-Tiffany' Tiffany become the actual Tiffany for a moment, because somehow I heard her say, "Wait a minute-…let me go you Cunning M-" but then she was slapped hard by the Elf Queen.

"Cunning Man, I thought you've had her!"

"I'm sorry, this one is strong!" complained the 'Not-Tiffany'.

I reached for my walkie talkie, "Houston-Flight, this is Mission Commander, we're about to engage hostiles…"

"This is Houston-Flight, I do believe that the President has authorized military action, you are clear to engage…but be advised, the Air Force has sent reinforcements…uh..they're-…there."

The way the Flight Director said 'there' was wrapped and baked in disbelief, "What do you mean here? When did they launch?" I asked.

"I mean they've only launched forty eight hours ago, approximately, and they're…their sensors and computers report that they're within the Disc's Sphere of Influence." said the Flight Director, "Sorry, scratch that, they;re in the atmosphere!"

We all heard a soft and distant rumble, like that of a thunder far away, but then it became a roar, a really loud one, it went from a strong gust of wind to that of something like an F-1 rocket engine firing off at the launchpad on liftoff.

Since Lancre was on a mountainous area, we can only see about four miles out before being blinded by fog, that thing that tore through the fog was not from this Discworld, in fact it had the words 'UNITED STATES' on its wing as well as the symbol of the Air Force.

The bad guys on the ground fled in terror, except for the Cunning Man-possessed-Tiffany Aching, but then even he decided to turn around and walk away.

"WHOO!" I yelled.

The spaceplane, well I've heard a thing or two about the 'Space Shuttle' concept and I do believe that is what NASA has sent to help us, banked and flew over us again, causing Jeb to remark "Show off!"

To be honest with you, I was expecting for that Shuttle to shoot lasers or something, I mean it was flying low and harassing the elves nearby, executing sonic booms at will.

"Where will that thing land?" wondered Jonathan, who entered the room we were in along with the Russians.

"The Chalk is my guess." I said, I patted Jeb on the shoulder, "Come on, let's tail that thing."

"How about us?" asked Jonathan.

"You stay here and keep an eye out for this castle, I need to meet these guys, I think that's our backup." I told them before making my way out of the castle and back to the grounds, the surprisingly bloodless grounds.

Jeb and I pretty much skipped through the whole start-up check sequence and shortened it to 'Will it blow up or not?' and when Jeb said 'nope' we punched the engines on and rocketed upwards.

Whenever I was waiting in the wings for my turn to have a piece of the action, I tend to go through the situation in my head, for one that was an interesting spacecraft and I'm not quite so sure if it was even human.

Jeb simply flew towards the direction we last saw the shuttle head towards and I remember him pointing at the screen, literally jabbing a finger at it, and saying "There she is, there she is captain, and it looks wonderful!"

He gently landed us not far from that thing and by the time I got out through the hatch I saw a familiar face climbing down the ladder, in fact he recognized me as much as I recognized him, "Captain James Thompson?" I heard Captain, or shall I say Major - Tom Harrison, shout through the distance.

He ran up to me and we shook hands, "Captain Tom Harrison!"

"Actually it's Major." said Major Tom (to ground control… - I know, he'll kill me if he reads this)

"Oh good, cause we heard that you needed a big shuttle capable of carrying a bomb and dropping it like a bomber, so the US Air Force did just that, we brought out our new toys just for this operation." said Tom.

"So, who's flying that thing?" I asked.

"Well, we'll need you on board as specialist." said Tom.

"But I do not know where the target is at precisely, only Ares and his team knows." I said.

He then patted me on the shoulder and said, "But you were the best pilot we've had and I have nothing but newborns in that cockpit, so I'll need someone else to lead them by example."

I smiled, Major Harrison was pretty much the only reason why I wasn't court martialed when I did all those silly things over Korea, "Alright, Major, I guess I'll be with you, but we better start now for our bombing run."

The cockpit of the Shuttle was bigger than that of a jumbo jet I can tell you that, and there was a empty chair, one of those extra chairs stuck to the side of the wall, with a helmet on it.

I wore the helmet, strapped myself in, and trust when I say that the Shuttle has broken so many laws of physics - at least Earth physics, or physics as we understood it - that it could be classified as a felon by simply being able to take off on a grassy field in a short amount of time, but then again it had rocket engines instead of jet engines.

I used my walkie talkie to contact Ares, "Apollo Lander, this is Mission Commander, can you give us the precise coordinates of our target."

"Through where exactly, the Cruiser? Mission Control?" asked Ares.

"Mission Control, then tell them to patch it to the Shuttle…the other one, they sent backup." I said, I then used the helmet microphone and asked, "Major Tom, who's our bombadier?"

"The computer is our bomb aim and dropper, we need the precise coordinates, we have an advanced guided nuclear tipped bomb ready to go!" exclaimed the Major.

"Sir," said on of the crew members who I got to know as Joshua Santos, "we have received the coordinates."

"Good. Mister Jackson, plot a course to those coordinates, I will be inputting the coordinates on the targeting computers."

At the speeds which we were going, we were just above our target in a matter of minutes, about ten minutes to be exact, it all went very, very fast to me and I never really understood precisely how it went so fast.

The pilot, Mister Jackson, then said "Sir, we're now a mile away from our target and enclosing fast."

The Major punched a thing or two on his computer, and by then I had no idea why he decided to bring me along for the ride, maybe it's just for fun, or maybe it's for the Major to show off to me or something.

But either way, the bomb dropped and I imagined it to have done so with a whistling noise that got softer and softer until-…well I would have said 'KABOOM' but we-…it was weird, instead of seeing the flash of light, we all, or at least I blacked out.

###

When I woke up, and I may sound crazy for saying this, but I was in the so called 'infirmary' of our Apollo Cruiser, which was made up of a special bed for space - a bed with straps on basically - and several basic diagnostic tools.

Floating beside me was Jeb, "Captain, you've been out for-…actually we've been out for…you know what, time was broken anyhow."

I looked to the person beside him and saw John, "Captain, when we were down there, we saw a flash and then we too blacked out, like some sudden ending of a movie."

"Where the hell are we?" I asked.

"Mission Control said that we're on our return trajectory to Earth." said Edmund, "They also told me that they've arrested the Soviets, or I think there's some political plans for them, either how we blew up their ship," he then tapped the side of his nose, "according to official sources."

"Then how about the unofficial sources?" I asked.

"We stole it."

"Oh." How expected, "But what now for us?"

"We're on our way home, that's it, show's over." said Jeb, "Mysteriously enough, even our landers are in one piece."

Ares quite literally floated into the conversation, "Actually they did mention a thing or two about gods and goddesses of the Disc, along with the other supernatural things of that world, I warrant that they booted us out as soon as they could."

"But how about Jonathan, the agent?"I asked.

"Cooling his heels in the 'brig' of the Shuttle." said Jeb.

So there it was, that was probably the most useless mission ever mounted by our race, but the mere fact that it had spurred in us the spirit of exploration, I think it was just right timing that the Disc fiasco happened. "Where is the Disc now?" I asked.

"Gone, Mission Control said that their sensors and space probes picked up the Disc heading straight into a deep dive into the Sun and was not flung outwards." said Jeb, he then shook his head, "We will never find out."

We returned to Earth rather quicker than expected, maybe the last few side effects of weirdness which we shall get to experience. I actually ended up crying slightly as I boarded the Lander Return Capsule (which was mysteriously docked without the lander part, only the return capsule) along with the other two and we jettisoned from the Apollo Cruiser.

We gave our Cruiser one last goodbye before flipping the capsule over so that the heatshield was facing the Earth's atmosphere, a few fleeting moments later, we were slowing down over the atmosphere and gently landed on the Pacific, or so what Mission Control told us after we regained communications.

Personally I do not want to go through what happened after, or rather what I ended up learning YEARS after all the adventure in detail but; the cute Russian with the red hair was raped and shot by her own K.G.B fellows and I think her fellow mutineers were shot too, the C.I.A guy was supposedly shot for opening fire on a police officer after being escorted back to his hometown. What's tragic about the Soviet episode was that I heard that President Muffley gave them sanctuary, but they were kidnapped by K.G.B agents were brought back to Russia.

As for us, well we were all showered with medals, fame, and reverence in the history of spaceflight and…well as I write this in the middle of the 2010s, I could say that we have made progress.

It's quite sad to say that we never set foot on Mars nor Venus in the aftermath of the Apollo Interplanetary, I guess the Pentagon took our money back to their coffers to fund their operations.

But that doesn't mean that we would never go back out there, not with the likes of several private rocket companies reinventing spaceflight, like being able to land first stage boosters at sea and such.

But I often wonder just how and what happened to the Disc, what kind of world was that place and what secrets did it hold? We may never find out in our lifetime, that is unless it shows up again, and I think that it would show up again somehow.

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A/N: Well, this Fanfic has become a bit tough to write towards the middle-end parts (because of writer's block) and while it would be up for revisions and editing, I would say that it is generally done, and for those who has been following the story as it unfolded throughout the days of writing, updating, and posting new chapters, I thank you, and I hope that I could sharpen my blade of writing with every new fanfic story published.


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